12.03.2022 – Whipped ocean
March 19, 2022
17.03.2022 – A streak of luck
March 24, 2022
Our spotter sent us far east across the wavy and windy seas all the way to Funchal for a wonderful sighting this afternoon. Short-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) were swimming in between a few whale-watching boats about 4 nautical miles off the coast and our team assessed the situation carefully on site. We prefer to avoid Funchal since we are aware of the boat traffic in the area and generally aim to minimise the impacts of observation on the animals at sea. So we decided to wait and let the dolphins come to us.. which they did!
The curiosity of intelligent animals such as cetaceans really truly is a blessing! The dolphins swam straight to our bow and surfed elegantly through the waves around and in front of our boat. It was spectacular to watch these gorgeous cetaceans make use of the waves to conserve their energy and even more thrilling to have them curiously glance at us as they did. Watching the dolphins surf those waves made us all wish we were one of them…and that can be used as a motivation to protect them! Particularly common dolphins tend to be the by-catch victims of the enormous super trawlers emptying the North Atlantic so you’re definitely doing our surfer friends a favour by boycotting that sort of fishing activity. We ended the tour with a magnificent drive along the coastline and arrived in Calheta with broad smiles on the faces of our guests.
By Paula Thake
Sightings of the day
Stenella
15:00 Short-beaked common dolphins
