13.07.2023 – May the odds be in your favour

Despite our teams experience in what we do, we cannot stress enough how important a healthy portion of luck is for sightings success during our tours. We are, after all, completely dependent on the presence of the animals within our search range and cannot control their abundance or occurrence.

Today was a testing day for our team. Westerly winds picked during the morning tours making finding animals, especially for dolphins fit for the snorkelling activity, quite difficult. We got lucky. A pod of Short-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) was swimming close to shore and, before long, we were all in the water gazing at these beautiful dolphins simply gliding alongside us. Waters close to shore are quite murky when compared to the clear waters further offshore and this is where we usually encounter Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis), the most curious dolphins of all. Common dolphin pods, particularly those containing calves in summer, tend to be small and evasive. However again, even here our time was lucky. The pod, calf included, approached our participants in the water curiously.

We didn’t get so lucky when it came to finding cetaceans in the afternoon but the Atlantic had us surprised nonetheless. While our Ribeira Brava had a short but spectacular sighting of a single breaching Blainville’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris), our crew aboard the Stenella had a lovely encounter with a Loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) and both boats encountered a Manta ray (Manta birostris), a rare sighting in our waters.

We concluded the day with a pods Short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrohynchus) and spotted dolphins, that seemed to appear out of nowhere after the bleak afternoon. This just underlines the fact that oceanic islands are like gas stations on the Atlantic freeway, consistently welcoming different highly mobile guests. Together with our effort, we can always simply hope that the odds are in our favour.

By Paula Thake

Sightings of the day

Ribeira Brava

09:30 Blainville’s beaked whales,  Short-beaked common dolphins

13:30 Blainville’s beaked whale

Stenella

09:30 Short-beaked common dolphins (snorkelling)

14:00 No cetacean sighting, Loggerhead turtle, Manta ray

17:00 Atlantic spotted dolphins, Short-finned pilot whales