31.05.2024 – Waiting for Whales
June 7, 2024
03.06.2024 – Out of the blue
June 10, 2024
Today, most of our tours had the chance to observe the beautiful Striped dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba). Our spotter’s capabilities leave us astonished, as he often finds these small dolphins several nautical miles from shore. On the long rides out into the blue, we enjoyed the fresh ocean breeze around us, until spotting the first leaps at the horizon. Striped dolphins are not necessarily easy to observe, as they are particularly fast swimming animals. Named “Streaker”, as they often rush away from boats, performing spectacular stunts and allowing us a brief look and them. In our case today, we were lucky enough to encounter a group of dozens of individuals. The water seemed to boil, while the animals swam fast and jumped acrobatically around us. Striped dolphins belong, still up to 2.5 m in length, to one of the smaller dolphin species that we find in the waters of our island. They have a beautiful, dark stripe on their flanks, which is not always easy to see at sea, if not only afterwards in our guides’ pictures.
Anyhow, it was another spectacular sighting out in the blue! After our dolphin encounter, we still had enough time to explore on our way back towards the coast, while coming across Cory’s Shearwater (Calonectris borealis), Portuguese man o’war (Physalia physalis), Flying fish (Cheilopogon melanurus) and algaes (Sargassum) until sailing back on the picturesque Madeiran south coast.
by Sarah Kather
Sightings of the day
Click on each sighting to access the photo gallery of the correspondent trip
Ribeira Brava
Stenella
16:00 Striped dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins
