Today was a bit of a mixed day out on the ocean. We started the morning with a bit of rain and mist like yesterday, but still we had some lovely encounters with two of our resident dolphin species: the bottlenose dolphin and the common dolphin. The bottlenose dolphins were the usual ones that have been dominating the south coast of São Miguel island over the past months: the group that includes a well known dolphin that we call Bubblemaker because this one is almost always blowing a trail of bubbles before surfacing.
In the afternoon we started again with the bottlenose dolphin group of Bubblemaker. We didn't stay with them for long because we received news from one of our lookouts that he had spotted some baleen whales a bit further out. The baleen whales turned out to be fin whales...3 of them travelling together! We had a nice encounter with 2 large adults and a smaller juvenile. After our whale encounter we still had more dolphins to see. From our catamaran we had a great and energetic encounter with a group of striped dolphins that was mixed with a few common dolphins. For our zodiac clients there was an extra encounter with a loggerhead turtle to add to our species list of the day. We also had a rare close-up encounter with a curious pomarine skua that was flying over our boats during our fin whale encounter. What a day!
Photos from the morning:
Enjoying the ride on our zodiac boat
Common dolphin
Watching bottlenose dolphins from our catamaran
Bottlenose dolphins
Our 2 zodiac boats out on the water
Photos from the afternoon:
One of the adult fin whales
The other adult fin whale
Watching the fin whales from our catamaran
The blowholes of one of the fin whales
One of our zodiac boats with the fin whales
2 of the fin whales at the surface together
Bottlenose dolphins
Striped dolphins
Striped dolphin
Striped dolphins
Striped dolphins
Watching striped dolphins from our catamaran
