A Killer Day !!!

I am speechless, there is no way to describe what occured this Tuesday morning, but I will do my best.

The ocean is a magical place and being able to live and breath the Atlantic breeze is truly a bliss. We navigated today to find a Sei Whale (Balaenoptera borealis), travelling. The sea was so calm that we were truly able to appreciate the speed to which these animals can travel. As you know Sei Whales have been sighted these past days and we are truly curious to find out how long will we will still spot migrating individuals.

 

 

The animal was travelling at a high speed to catch up to a pod of Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stenella frontalis), as soon as the whale arrived the pod started to scatter and flee the scene, we believe that this happened because there were a lot of little newborn spotties (awww cute!!!) that were in the group.

 

 

We received news to travel outside of a town called “Agua d’Alto” and what we saw there was breathtaking…

A huge group of False Killer Whales (Pseudorca crassidens) travelling; Then out of the sudden the whales (which are actually dolphins by the way!) started hunting a huge swordfish. The blood was tainting the water, pieces of intesitnes where left untouched by the pod. This may sound gruesome but these dolphins are known to interact with other species of dolphins without hurting them, yet again they are also known of course to feed on large species of fish like the mahi-mahi or tuna and share the spoils, exactly like Killer Whales (Orcinus orca).

 

 

There are only a few sightings a year in the Azores of these Oceanic dolphins, not only they are impressive in size like the 6m males that decided to check out our boat but they are completely black.

 

 

This post is only to describe our day at sea, please stay tuned for the edition of the footage captured by our crew, it is mesmerizing. I promise

If you are a cetacean enthusiast then you probably will laugh at the joke #Blackfish.