20.05.2025 – Ancient beings

Although we go out mainly to see whales and dolphin species, we sometimes have the luck to see also some other marine life. Today we had for example three loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) on the second Ribeira Brava trip. Sea turtles in general are quite old as marine organisms. They have been around swimming in the oceans since the times of the dinosaurs, surviving several extinctions events. In all of these millions of years they remained almost unchanged, so when we see them we can appreciate these ancient beings. 

Here in Madeira we have almost always the Loggerhead sea turtle, but with luck others like the Green sea turtle (Chelonia midas), Hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) and the Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) can be seen.

Apart from the turtles we also saw some dolphins today, the Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), the Striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba) and the Atlantic spotted dolphin (Stenella frontalis). The only non dolphin cetacean was the Blainville’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris)

By Horst Schulte

Sightings of the day

Ribeira Brava

09:00 Bottlenose dolphin

13:00 Loggerhead sea turtle, Striped dolphin

Stenella

09:30 Bottlenose dolphin, Striped dolphin

13:30 Striped dolphin, Flying fish

16:00 Blainville’s beaked whale, Atlantic spotted dolphin