CETUS the brand new catamaran of FUTURISMO

Our new catamaran CETUS arrived to São Miguel island today. In a few days the boat will start to sail our waters looking for whales and dolphins.

CETUS novo catamaran da Futurismo

Chegou hoje a Ponta Delgada o novo catamaran da empresa Futurismo. A embarcação terá como principal vocação a observação de baleias e golfinhos. Estão programadas outras acções no ambito da animação turística.
Trata-se de um barco que é fruto de 21 anos de experiencia da Futurismo e foi construído especialmente para o chamado Whale Watching. Dispõe de generosos espaços exteriores que permitem uma observação de 360 graus ao nível do convés e do tombadilho. Na frente existe um anfiteatro que proporciona um acesso exepcional para o campo de visão dos cetáceos.
O barco dispõe ainda de um amplo salão e casas de banho.
O CETUS obedece às normas europeias para navios de passageiros e foi homologado pelo IPTM. Dentro de dias estará a navegar nos mares de São Miguel.

Today was a beautiful day in São Miguel. The sea was really calm and clear and by mid morning the sun made an appearance to warm the day. It was one of those great days of many sightings on the sea. We had some really great encounters with our resident bottlenose dolphins and also with a group of striped dolphins that were leaping across the flat surface in the characteristic way that they travel. The whale species seen today were sperm whales for both the morning and afternoon tours, and a humpback whale mother and calf in the afternoon. These photos taken today give an impression of this great day:

Striped dolphins travelling together at high speed

Sperm whale diving

Humpback whales (calf on the left, mother on the right)

Hundreds of common dolphins surfing the waves

Today we have a fair bit of wind in São Miguel, so the sea is a little rough. However, with our large catamaran we were still able to go on a tour this morning. Not to far out of Ponta delgada we came across a group of common dolphins. More dolphins kept coming until eventually we were surrounded by hundreds of dolphins. The dolphins were being very playfull and kept coming up in groups to surf with the waves. Here are some photos from the tour:

Sightings today: sperm whales, common dolphins, sei whales and bottlenose dolphins

Today we had another great day of whale watching. During the morning tour, groups of common dolphins and sperm whales were seen off the South coast of São Miguel island. In the afternoon we went out with the intention of seeing the sperm whales again, but the tour turned completely different. Instead we saw 5 Sei whales and a large group of bottlenose dolphins. Out here every tour is unique, you never really know what you will be seeing, which is makes it more exciting. Here are some photos from our afternoon tour today:

Bottlenose dolphins seen very close to the coastline this afternoon

Some of the 5 sei whales that we saw travelling together in the afternoon

Mr Liable

Yesterday a sperm whale that we call Mr Liable visited the waters of São Miguel again. Mr Liable is a large male that we see here on a regular basis and we have come to know him very well. We can recognise him by the marks on his flukes and now also by the scars which we noticed on his head yesterday. During our afternoon tour yesterday Mr Liable showed us the most magnificent tail as he went on his dive. He lifted his tail so high that it looked like he might flip over completely. Yesterday we also saw common dolphins, saw it was another sucessful day of whale watching in São Miguel.

April sighting statistics

The month of April has been really good this year for whale watching in São Miguel. This month we have seen 11 cetacean species: 6 whale species and 5 dolphin species! This is the month that the baleen whale species are passing the Azores, so we have seen many of these, especially Sei whales. We are also starting to get many sperm whale sightings (almost 50% of the days we went out in April), which is a good sign that summer is on its way. The above graph shows the sighting frequency of the species we saw in April:

• Common dolphin (Delphinus delphis)


• Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)


• Striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba)


• Risso´s dolphin (Grampus griseus)


• Pilot whale (Globicephalus macrorhynchus)


• Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus)


• Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae)


• Blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus)


• Minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata)


• Sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis)


• Fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus)

Sei whales feeding in São Miguel

Yesterday afternoon in São Miguel we were very lucky to see 2 sei whales feeding. Normally when we see baleen whales, like sei whales, in the Azores they are just passing through on their migration, so it was really special to see them feeding here. Sei whales are baleen whales, so they filter small food out of the water using baleen plates in the roof of their mouth. In this case we saw them feeding on swarms of krill at the surface. There were large patches of water that were red from the krill, and it was here that we saw the whales lunging up from the depth and swimming on their sides to take in huge mouthfulls of krill and water. Several times we could see into their huge mouths and we were able to see their baleen plates which they use to trap the krill and their throat pleats which allows their mouth to expand to take in the huge mouthfulls. Here are some photos from the tour:

Open mouth of a sei whale feeding. On the left you can see the top jaw with the baleen plates

Swimming on its side to skim feed along the surface

Here you can see the throat pleats expanded as the whale is feeding

These are the krill (small shrimp-like animals) that the sei whales were feeding on

Krill swarm alongside our boat giving the water a red colour

Our first pilot whales for the year!

This afternoon we saw pilot whales off the coast of São Miguel for the first time this year. It has been a good day in general. In the afternoon we also had encounters with bottlenose dolphins and common dolphins, and a few of us also saw some striped dolphins among the common dolphins. Our dolphin swimming was also very sucessful this afternoon. The crew came back speaking of a very nice swim with our resident common dolphins. The morning was also very good, as our whale watchers had a very nice encounter with "Mr Liable", a large male sperm whale that frequently visits this area and could be identified from his tail which he raised nice and high during our encounter with him. Here are some photos from this afternoon:

Pilot whales

Common dolphins

Swimming with wild dolphins and our recent sperm whale sightings

Summer is slowly coming upon us in the Azores. We are having more days of good weather and calm seas, and the water is starting to warm up. This is the time of the year that we start having swimming with dolphins and more encounters with sperm whales.

Yesterday morning we had an excellent tour swimming with our resident bottlenose dolphins. The dolphins were not shy at all, in fact they were very curious towards our swimmers. At one point we could count about 30 dolphins all swimming with us. Several times we had the dolphins circling around us and coming up from the deep to have a good look at us. There´s nothing like being face to face with a large wild dolphin, it was an absolutely exhilirating experience!

As well as our many other recent sightings (common dolphins, striped dolphins and a blue whale yesterday!) we have been seeing sperm whales the past 4 days in a row off São Miguel island. We have seen many types of behaviour, including animals diving to show their huge tails, mothers and calves travelling together, and yesterday we saw a lot of socialising and a very curious female that came up to our boat and kept rolling onto her back so we could see her white belly and full body length through the water. Here are some photos from our sperm whale encounters of the past two days:

One of the sperm whales seen on the morning of the 25th:

Sperm whales seen during the 26th of April:Curious female sperm whale rolling upside down just beneath the surface

Sperm whale calf in the foreground, tail of the mother in the background

More sperm whales, a fin whale, risso´s dolphins and common dolphins

Today turned out to be another great whale watching day here in São Miguel. Although the sun didn´t make much of an appearance, we were thankfull to have a perfectly calm sea and great sightings during the day. In the morning we saw a few risso´s dolphins, followed by common dolphins and sperm whales. It was a great sighting of the sperm whales; we saw 2 large individuals breathing on surface of the very calm water. After a few minutes they went down on a deep dive; both of them raising their tails high into the air.

Some of our passengers very excited by the common dolphins swimming around their boat

One of the sperm whales we saw diving during our morning tour

Our afternoon tour started off with an encounter with a small group of common dolphins. After that our onshore lookout guided us to an area where he had seen a whale. Not long after we arrived to the area we were surprised by a large fin whale which unexpectedly surfaced close to one of our small boats. We are very happy to have made it a very memorable easter for today´s passengers.

Large fin whale surfacing close to one of our boats

The fin whale

Sperm whales, minke whale, dolphins and more

The past two days in São Miguel have been great for our whale watching tours. We have been very busy over this easter period taking out many people to see the whales and dolphins that have been around. The sea has been very calm, so it has been perfect to also see many other species such as sharks, turtles, and even tuna. Yesterday we saw 5 cetacean species during 3 tours: sperm whales, a minke whale, common dolphins, Risso´s dolphins and striped dolphins. Later we will provide an update from our tour this afternoon. For now, here are some photos from our tours this morning.

Large male sperm whale seen yesterday morning

Mother and calf sperm whales seen yesterday morning

Very small minke whale seen yesterday morning

Humpback whales again in São Miguel

This morning we were lucky in São Miguel to have our third humpback whale encounter of the season. The two adult humpback whales were travelling together among a social group of common dolphins. The whales were spending a fair bit of time diving and re-surfacing in unpredictable places, but after a bit of patientce, and following the dolphins we were able to have a good look at these amazing whales. Just before we were about to leave the area one of the whales brought up its magnificent tail, giving us a perfect end to our tour.

In the afternoon we returned to the same area where our watchman had been seeing the whales passing, but unfortunately this time we did not encounter the whales. Nevertheless, there were still plenty of common dolphins around, that made up for it by putting on a great display of jumps and wave surfing.

Blue whale, sei whale, common dolphins and a leatherback turtle

Leatherback turtle

The above photo was taken by one of our passengers, Sari Wallin, that she has kindly shared with us. It is a photo of the head of the leatherback turtle we saw during our tour this morning. We do not often see leatherback turtles here, so we were all very excited and most of us (including myself) missed the photo opportunity. We actually managed to get quite close to the turtle as it was lying on the surface among a pod of common dolphins. We got to see its huge shell which was over a metre long, then it lifted up its head and went down on a dive.

Common dolphin Common dolphin

Blue whale

Blue whale

Throughout the day we also had encounters with a blue whale and several sei whales that were passing very close to the coastline. by the early afternoon the huge blue whale had approached the coast to just outside of Ponta Delgada, only a few minutes travel out of the marina. We also had a couple of groups of common dolphins around, which included several very small calves and some very acrobatic individuals. We were able to see the dolphins clearly as they were diving deep under our boat. We were lucky to have another one of those perfect days of crystal clear water here in the Azores.