26.10.2024 – Sleeping giants

I wouldn’t call today an easy day on the ocean. Wind and waves accompanied us continuously, making today’s tours adventurous indeed. Despite the winds, our spotter managed to find us three different species, being Striped dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba), Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and the largest of all toothed whales, the mighty Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus). Now, do me a favour and search for “Sperm whales” on the internet. It will give you a totally wrong impression of what to expect when encountering them during a whale watching trip. You might find illustrations of Sperm whales fighting with giant squid, you surely find underwater images of these beautiful, gentle giants demonstrating their massive, weirdly shaped heads. Well, this is not how you encounter Sperm whales from a from a boat. The few minutes they spend between their deep feeding dives at the surface, Sperm whales remain almost motionless on the surface, refilling the oxygen in their bodies. This is why they usually look like a log from the whale watchers perspective. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Sperm whales, but much of their beauty is left to our imagination. This afternoon, one of our boats slowly approached one of these beauties literally logging at the surface, as the whale disappeared from one moment to the other. Patiently, we waited for him to come up again, as we got surprised not by only one, but three large heads popping out of the surface. There was only one explanation – the whales went for a nap. You might have heard this before, but Sperm whales rest, other than any other whale species, hanging vertically in the water column. After five minutes watching heads appearing on the surface every now and then, the whales woke up again, moving into their normal logging position. We admired the whales for another few minutes and hoped for them to lift up their large flukes before going for a deep feeding dive. Indeed, they started to move differently, but only to dive in slow motion without showing much of their tails. What had happened? The whales had disappeared and my only explanation was that they went for another nap, but we could not spot the animals anywhere. We decided to slowly move away and pick up some trash which was floating on the surface. When I reached into the water, I could not believe my eyes – a Sperm whale, head facing downwards, a few meters away from our boat, peacefully resting. Our skipper took the chance and filmed the scene underwater – please watch these sleeping beauties yourself, it still takes my breath away every single time!

by Sarah Kather

Sightings of the day

Ribeira Brava

09:30 Striped dolphins

13:30 Bottlenose dolphins, Sperm whales

Stenella 

09:30  Striped dolphins, Sperm whales

13:30  Bottlenose dolphins, Sperm whales

16:30  Bottlenose dolphins, Sperm whales