For the first time this year we saw pilot whales and also saw four Sei whales

One more day with perfect weather conditions in São Miguel Island.

In the morning tour we started with risso's dolphins, one of our resident species. This dolphins were very calm in the surface and moving around the boats, something that you don't see so often in this species, normaly they keep the distance. 

Risso´s dolphin 

We continued and found our second specie of the day, the bottlenose dolphins (also a resident species). It was a very big pod and were spread out in a very big area. They were very active, jumping around and playng with the boat. 

Watching Bottlenose dolohins

Striped dolphin jumping

 Striped dolphins very active

Striped dolphin jumping

A pod of Striped dolphins 

For the first time this year we saw pilot whales! They were floating in the surface of the water for a while and started so move and dive very slowley. A very normal behaviour of this species.

Pilot whales 

Pilot whales 

In our afternoon tour we started again with the risso's dolphin having the same behaviour, when the where under water almost look like ghosts because of their white coloration. 

The bottlenose dolphins were also part of the afternoon tour but this time it was a very small pod and were not very interested in the boats, so we had to respect them and leave them alone. 

We went out to try to find some whales but we end up to encounter a very big piece of marine garbage (it looked like part of a ship, and it was impossible to pick it up) associated with dozens of different species of fishes. Unfortunetley garbage (mostly plastic) it's what we found the most in our oceans and some of the marine life started to see the plastics as their new homes... almost becoming new ecossystems of our oceans.




In Pico Island, in the morning we went swimming with dolphins. We swam with Striped, Common and Risso's dolphins. We also encountered tree Sperm whales with a calf.

And in the afternoon, in our Whale watching tour, we saw four Sei whales, five Sperm whales and Common, Bottlenose and Risso's dolphins!

Sei whale

Sperm Whale tail

Photos by David Rodrigues and Rui Santos