Olas’ Whale-Watchers!
What we thought it was an isolate sighting, turned up to the first of a long (we hope!) series. Yes, I am talking about Bryde’s Whales (Balaenoptera edeni) which today we encountered again but this time it was a mother with her calf! The pair was just a off the shore of Ribeira Quente, as you can appreciate by the picture. Bryde’s Whales generally never leave tropical and subtropical warm waters, to the extent that they are considered a “tropical” whale. Well, it happens that we are experiencing a quite tropical weather here in São Miguel, both in terms of atmospheric humidity and water temperatures.
On top of this amazing sighting, our guests and crew encountered two massive Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) males, one in the morning and another one in the afternoon, as we could verify by the excellent Photo-Identification pictures taken by our Skipper Tiago. Also these bulls are not really resident of our waters and they normally inhabit higher latitudes which they leave for warmer waters only to look for a chance to mate.
Male Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) “rainblow”
Male Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) fluke.
To complete today’s picture, a group of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were also spotted in the morning.
Let’s see if these visiting whales will stick around enjoying our warm summer 🙂
Your thoughts on this?