Today was an excited day! Summer was back in the air, and maybe because of the heat the animals decided to spend their time flying through the fresh air, literally 😉

We started of with 2 times 2 different mother and calf Sperm whales. At first they were relaxing and shallow diving next to our boat a couple of times, while the calf most likely went under the mom to drink milk. After a while they made a weird dive, showing their fluke a bit but not nearly as much as it would be for a deep dive. A short minute later the calf completely jumped out of the water next to our boat (see photo on top of this post). Shortly after mom did the same thing. (see below) They repeated this for another 3 times while we were all watching with open mouth.
Like I said – maybe they wanted to cool down from the heat? 😉 It is rare to witness them jump close-up, just because you have to be on the right place on the right moment and for that, the ocean is too large!

Mother Sperm whale jumping (after baby whale – see main photo on top of this post)

 

After a while the jumping stopped, and the flukes showed like it usually does before a deep dive, so finally the whales went off for real.

 

Mother goes for a deep dive.

 

Then, another great surprise; Pilot whales were around again, just like yesterday! These large toothed whale can reach more then 7 meters in length. The males are easy to identify when they are older because of their much more curved dorsal fin and outstanding overall length, in comparison with the females. It was quit a large group and they calmly surfaced around the boat for a while.

 

Pilot whales (the large one on the left is the male)

 

Today, our swimming with dolphins were a bite more particular than usual. We had a group of free divers as we have the Ocean and Flow Festival around this week. They had the chance to swim with different species: common dolphins and Atlantic spotted dolphins! We even had striped dolphins really close to the group of common dolphins this morning. striped dolphins seemed to “annoy” the common dolphins during their breakfast time, and it was pretty funny to observe. We started the afternoon by observing Risso’s dolphins before joining the Spotties. Most of these free divers, could swim in the deep, called “apnea” as they are pretty well trained in it. At the end of the trip, we stayed a while in the middle of the ocean and they could do a “free dance” under water, that was really nice to observe as well 🙂

 

Active common dolphins today.

 

If you want to join us for a swimming with the dolphins and if you have particular request, you can talk with us and we can arrange a memorable trip 😉

So, this was a day not to forget. Why do you think the whales jumped so near to our boat today? Was it the hot weather or something else? Let us know your thought below!

Marine

About Marine

Marine is Marine Biologist and was Marine Wildlife Guide at TERRA AZUL in 2017. She is now wondering the World and discovering new things! We hope soon she'll get back in touch to share, and to help update this profile.