13.08.2022 – Its a blue planet

Some days are more challenging than others. While on some days, we find animals just in front of the Marina, on other days we need to travel to almost the other end of the island to find so movement on the glassy water surface. Whale watching is a lot about decision  making, trial and error and a lot of luck combined with the right timing! In the morning tour we found Blainville Beaked Whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) just in front of Calheta and not a lot further away a pod of Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). In the afternoon we had to travel a very long distance until we were closer to the deserted island than to our Marina. Finally we found a pod of Atlantic Spotted of dolphins (Stenella frontalis) – not the first time they saved our day!! Unluckily we had to share this beautiful encounter with aha few other boats including big catamarans. Lososonda generally tries to avoid encounters shared with many boat to minize the impact on the animals. So we had our few minutes and made our long way back.. To our surprise the Blainville Beaked Whale family from the morning greeted us of our way. A Loggerhead Turtle (Caretta caretta) also showed up on the surface and had a little glimpse on us. The evening meant more exploration and long search until the Cory Shearwaters (Calonectris borealis) led us the way to a big pod of Spotties feeding. Here’s a shout of appreciation to those Atlantic seabirds that we don’t mention enough on here! So often leading our way to a group of dolphins as those two species mostly feed at the same time. Those birds can dive up to 20m deep to feed on fish, but of course prefer if they have dolphins pushing all the fish up to the water surface and making the whole process a little easier..
Nature never ceases to amaze!

by Paulina Kalita

Sightings of the day

Ribeira Brava

10:00 Bottlenose Dolphin, Blainville Beaked Whale

15:00 Bottlenose Dolphin

Stenella

10:00 Bottlenose Dolphin, Blainville Beaked Whale, Loggerhead Turtle

14:00 Atlanic Spotted Dolphins, Blainville Beaked Whale, Loggerhead Turtle

17:00 Atlantic Spotted Dolphin