10.06.2025 – Rough winds
June 17, 2025
Although we go out to see whales and dolphins on our trip, today I want to highlight one thing we can see for sure: Madeira. Madeira is a special island. She was born over 5 million years ago when on the sea floor some 4000m below the surface volcanic activity started. At one point she then breached the surface and the island as we know it was born.
But as Madeira was never connected to a landmass, at the beginning she was simply a barren rock in the vast Atlantic Ocean. But this wasn’t the case forever. With the help of birds, wind and the ocean, life started to arrive to the island, its fertile soils providing nutrients for a lush vegetation. The most prominent vegetation of Madeira is the so called Laurissilvia or Laurel forest in English. This subtropical forest exists on the islands now almost 2 million years and is a relict ecosystem. These type of forest was common also in southern Europe in the past, but was displaced by the glaciations, were it went extinct, only surviving on the Canary Islands and Madeira and here on Madeira the largest intact portion remains. This is the reason why walking through this forest feels a bit prehistoric.
So next time when walk through that forest, remember that you almost time traveled.
Still on the trip today we saw marines life. We had Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) and a Loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta).
By Horst Schulte
Sightings of the day
Ribeira Brava
09:00 Atlantic spotted dolphins, Loggerhead sea turtle
