10.08.2024 – No Jonah…
August 18, 2024
12.08.2024 – En-dolphins, the happy happiness boosters
August 20, 2024
Most of today’s sky was covered in clouds. Although you might have hoped for sunshine during your tour, an overcast day can be quite a relief. The heat and sun these days are exhausting and have even caused some of our passengers to get seasick. Grey skies instead, combined with a slight rocking of the boats in the waves, seemed to make everyone on board a little sleepy. Nothing better then some whales and dolphins to brighten up your day – today’s stars on the ocean were: Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), Atlantic Spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis), Rough-toothed dolphins (Steno bredanensis), Striped dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba) and even two masters of deep diving – Blainville beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) and Goose-beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris).
Speaking of being sleepy, how do our whales and dolphins nap?
As one of our cetaceans’ outstanding adaptations to live in water, they will not have the chance to take a good night sleep while laying down on the ocean floor. Instead, you would rather call their sleep a short rest. Scientists call these short moments of rest unihemispheric slow wave sleep (USWS, what a fun word to throw in at your next dinner party). In other words, our whales and dolphins will only sleep with one side of their brains while the other half will be awake. Awake enough to be conscious about their surroundings, eventual dangers (as in Orcas, or boats) and, breathing. While large whales may stay stable in the water column during these short periods of sleep, smaller dolphins and whales will always maintain movement, even a little, to keep warm enough. That means, you may observe a very calm group of dolphins during their nap time! Fatigue is contagious, they say. Maybe this explains how some of our passengers tend to fall asleep towards the end of our trips…?
By Sarah Kather
Sightings of the day
Ribeira Brava
09:30 Bottlenose dolphins
13:30 Rough-toothed dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins
Stenella
09:30 Bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic spotted dolphins
14:00 Rough-toothed dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins, Striped dolphins
17:00 Atlantic spotted dolphins, Striped dolphins, Blainville’s beaked whales, Cuvier-beaked whales
