12.05.2018 – Charlie Brown

Many of our guests this week have inquired about whether we had any Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) sightings lately, including a young couple that dropped by our shop and were particularly eager to see the animals. I informed them that, while it is very unlikely to have sightings of these animals right now, you never know and they should just give it a shot.

So they joined us on todays morning tour aboard the Ribeira Brava and it’s almost as if the Atlantic Ocean heard their bidding.

Apart from sightings with Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and a surprise encounter with Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis), we also had the pleasure of observing a small group of rafting Sperm whales. Sperm whales sightings are always exciting for our guests; from the moment we discover the animals and watch them relaxing silently at the surface of the ocean to the last seconds of the sighting, where the huge cetaceans lift their flukes to dive into the depths. Sperm whales press all the air out of their lungs in one huge exhalation before they engage in a deep dive and plummet head first into the dark ocean. They do this so that their lungs can withstand the extreme changes in pressure during the dive and power their movement underwater through the oxygen retained in a special pigment in their muscle cells.

This was the second Sperm whale sighting for our team this year and definitely marked a splendid end to our week.

P.S Charlie Brown is a cartoon character from the comic strip “Peanuts”. In the series he is often extremely unlucky but, despite this, he hopes for the best and accomplishes many things through his spurts of optimism.

10:00 Bottlenose dolphins, Sperm whales

15:00 Atlantic spotted dolphins, Sperm whales