Whales be cheeky !

What a day!!!!

Allow me to narrate a little about the crazy trip we had today.

The morning started with the encounter of a nursing pod of Common Dolphins (Delphinus delphis). The amazing travelling dolphins with their little babies following their mother and looking for fish. Are just the most endearing thing to see.

Baby dolphins it does not matter what you tell me, are the cutest thing on this planet.

Not too long after, we left in order to search for a blow that both our lookouts had spotted from land. We saw the diving whale, meaning that we only saw a splash of water. None of us was able to see the whale from the boat. We now know that it was a Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) after discussing at the base with our lookouts. We searched for the animal for one hour and half. I always ask people to expect the unexpected when being out there in the ocean. We did not see the whale again, not even a blow. This is bound to happen as well in nature. I like to narrate the search-effort that we went through this morning, since I believe that it is important to narrate every single situation lived out there in the ocean.

We were heading back towards the marina when out of the blue at 11:35, three of our customers spotted Beaked whales. Our skipper Tiago was fast enough to realise that this encounter was fascinating. We had not seen beaked whales for 3 months. Beaked whales if you will, are a group whales belonging to the Mesoplodon genre. The are deep divers and are in Azores what we call “rare sightings”. We most likely believe that this mother and calf belonged to the Blainville’s beaked whale species (Mesoplodon densirostris). In order to correctly identify these animals you need to be close and observe the beak and coloration of the animal. You can read more about beaked whales on our published post HERE!.

 

 

So it was with a big smile, that we returned to our base even though we were unable to have a good sighting of the Sperm whale. Nature is always full of surprises and today was proof of that.