12.01.2016 – Never the less, it’s still a sea mammal
January 17, 2016
17.01.2016 – Fin whale escort
January 22, 2016Since 12 years we are observing the Atlantic Ocean, mostly in the south-west of Madeira island. This is only a very small part of these much bigger ocean and even like this, there is always a lot news to explore. Today we want to talk a bit about the Pilot whale, because we had so nice encounters in these first month of 2016 (every trips encountered pilot whales) and during 2015. But as well they appeared a lot in the media for bad reasons, like they are hunted on a brutal way on the Faröer island in the so called Grindadrap. And in Taiji, Japan, they are hunted and tortured from September till March as well.
Normally we see these Pilot whales laying calm at the surface while resting or they are doing spyhops, but they are as well a very fast species, diving 2 meters per second. In November 2015 from our boats we could observe a leap, something very rare. For our guides onboard Stenella and as well Ribeira Brava, all happened too fast, so no photo was taken from us, but one of our guests captured these special behavior and gave us the pics. Thanks to Martin Hentschel for these nice photos.
How will be the year 2016 for these animals? Who wants to oppose the killing of these beautiful marine mammels, take action on these sites:
Sea Shepherd
Delphinschutz.org
Walschutzaktion.de
General information about the Short-finned pilot whale on our WEBSITE and here are some more beautiful photos from 2015
by Claudia Gomes
