17.06.2022 –  Blue turtles

Meeting dolphins underwater is an exhilarating experience! Lobosonda offers snorkelling trips with Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis), which is a very popular tour amongst all people who dream of meeting dolphins in their natural habitat. Like with all our encounters, however, snorkelling must remain a passive encounter where the interaction is initiated by the animals.

This week we were able to provide several underwater encounters with different species for a team of professional freedivers. During the encounters the divers try their best to remain as still and passive as possible and let the animals approach them. The running gag of the week was that they drift at the surface during such encounters like a basking sea turtle. Our three basking blue turtles had the pleasure of drifting alongside an enormous school of over 200 spotted dolphins today before managing a nice observation of Short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus). Our team and clients decided to settle with an encounter from the boat for the latter species when we saw the several boats heading to the sightings area from Funchal.

In the afternoon our Stenella sped east again to meet some spotted dolphins, likely a subgroup that was travelling with the larger pod earlier today. The animals swam, curiously around our boat before socialising and breaching alongside us. It was a fantastic sighting and wrapped up a lovely day out on the ocean!

By Paula Thake

Sightings of the day

Stenella

09:00 Atlantic spotted dolphins, Short-finned pilot whales

15:00 Atlantic spotted dolphins