22.08.2024 – Being on track

This morning couldn’t have started any better for me. After calling the spotter on land, the captain ment “There are pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) only a few nautical miles off the shore”. One of my, if not THE favourite cetacean I could encounter in the blue. Short-finned pilot whales are in fact marine dolphins (Delphinidae), but owe their name to their sheer size of maximum 7 meters in length. Their latin name, Globicephala, means “round head” – the large, bulbous melon is the first thing to catch your eye when seeing them. The dolphins use their melons to better focus sound waves when searching in depth for their favourite found source, which is squid. Pilot whales are almost entirely black in colour, very elegant and unusual looking. They are outstandingly social animals, which we often encounter logging very calmly on the surface. Today, we encountered not only one but two different pods. The first one had some tiny calves in the group, which often lifted their little round heads completely out of the ocean. In the second group, a massive male calmly swam beside the boat for a while. While I found myself on cloud number nine, it was my colleague Peter who still managed to focus and observe another very exciting detail – A satellite tag on one of the pilot whales dorsal fins! I had heard of a particular tagging project before, which is done by MARE, one of our local research institutes, in cooperation with the Azorean research institute Nova Atlantis Foundation.
The movements of 4 Pilot whales tagged in the Azores and one individual tagged in Madeira are tracked this way in order to better understand their movements, home range, habitat preferences, amongst others. In the best case, this knowledge can be the base for creating Marine protected areas, offering special shelter for marine wildlife. Contacting the researchers at MARE, the researchers confirmed that the particular animal which Peter saw and photographed this morning was indeed “Donatello”, the individual tagged in Madeira the 9th of July! It has been photographed by Pete this morning for the very first time since. Thanks to the satellite tag, scientists can confirm that he (or she, don’t get fooled by the name), spent almost the entire time since beginning of July in the southeast of Madeira island. Now, the most amazing part is that you can follow not only Donatello’s but also other tagged marine wildlife online! Also this morning, the pod was moving eastwards, probably towards their favourite spot around the island. This explains why we only encounter pilot whales every now and then – today the first time in August! What a special morning indeed!

By Sarah Kather

Sightings of the day

Ribeira Brava

09:30 Short-finned pilot whales

13:30 Rough-toothed dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins, Loggerhead Sea turtle

Stenella

09:30 Short-finned pilot whales

13:30 Rough-toothed dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins

17:00 Rough-toothed dolphins