Month: May 2014

Addendum of pictures of the 2014 expedition

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Thursday we had four encounters with blue whales, one of them a breathtaking experience. The joke on board the Physeter was, “Now we know what blue whales play with—us!” because our first blue whale of the day circled the boat three times before heading off on a deep dive—directly under us! A couple of fin whales, one humpback, and encounters with common dolphins as the first and last encounters rounded out the day.

Friday the team had another remarkable day. First, the team reported a random sighting of the sun 🙂

Our first cetacean encounter was with two blue whales and a fin feeding together. It was another action-packed day with plenty of whales spotted by the vigias, as well as several random sightings of animals we spotted on our own. “Eyes to the back of the boat” was the motto of the day, and sure enough, many of the cetaceans chose to sneak up behind us today. We spotted an uncooperative humpback, which only fluked once. Luckily our photographer for the day, Simon, caught it right as its tail disappeared into a wave.

Humpback whales are unusual here in the Azores, and while there were reports of a few sightings of humpbacks before team 3, only team 3 actually saw them. Counting today’s last humpback encounter, Lisa was downright giddy that this was our fifth individual seen this season.

Another unusual occurrences war the “norm” for team 3; Lisa had just pointed out a few petrels – a species of bird that is generally not present this time of year – and had commented on how she had never before seen so many. There were around 150 birds and then we saw the reason why; they were feeding on a dead whale.

We estimated that the whale carcass was about 3-4 months old. Indeed, it was far gone (luckily our skipper kept us upwind). The species was unidentifiable, but the enormous amount of floating blubber did not leave any doubt as to what it was. In general the team agreed that it was a privilege to see the dead whale, an honour to bear witness to the cycle of life having also seen young whale calves during our time here. We also were privileged to see several blue whales, pilot fish, and the now-positively identified Wilson’s storm petrels.

A big thank-you to all team 3 members for your hard work. Your efforts catalogued:

Bottlenose dolphins – 0 encounters (much to Martina’s dismay…)

Common Dolphins – 18 encounters totalling 522 animals

Risso’s dolphins – 4 encounter totalling 36 animals

Fin whales – 11 encounters totalling 19 animals

Sei whales – 9 encounters totalling 11 animals

Blue whales – 16 encounters totalling 21 animals

Humpback whales – 5 encounters with 5 individuals

Sperm whales – 22 encounters with 15 identified individuals

and

Loggerhead turtles – 4 encounters with 4 individuals (with 1 tagged)

Saturday was the last day of the expedition and we obviously did our training job well in the Azores because after we said good-bye to team 3, I received a phone call from Martina at the airport…Diana had spotted a fluke! The two confirmed a humpback whale right off the coast of the island. Good work team!

Indeed good work everyone this year! A sincere thanks to all our hard working participants who came out with us this year. Your contributions in effort and time really made a difference in our research here – we simply would not have been out on the sea at this incredible time without you making this expedition happen. Thanks for braving bad weather, choppy seas, seasickness and POPA paperwork.

Overall stats for all three slots combined:

Bottlenose dolphins – 8 encounters totalling 60 animals

Common dolphins – 62 encounters totalling 1429 animals

Risso’s dolphins – 8 encounter totalling 82 animals

Fin whales – 20 encounters totalling 36 animals

Sei whales – 21 encounters totalling 37 animals

Blue whales – 19 encounters totalling 25 animals

Humpback whales – 5 encounters with 5 individuals

Sperm whales – 91 encounters totalling 276 animals

and

Loggerhead turtles – 11 encounters with 11 individuals

Leatherback turtles – 1 encounter with 1 individual

It was great to meet all of you and a privilege for Lisa and I to work alongside you. I hope to see you on another expedition. Can someone give me a water temperature please?

Alisa

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Tuesday we came close to breaking the Biosphere Expeditions record for the highest number of individual sperm whales catalogued in one day…we sighted 15 individual animals! We did, however, break the number of sperm whale breaches, with an astounding SIX breaches. Plus we saw another two sperm whale tail lobs. A tail lob is when a large whale positions themselves downwards vertically and then slaps the water surface with the stock of their tail.

On the way back to base we also saw two pods of Risso’s dolphins and a small group of striped dolphins.

Wednesday Ana Besugo, a researcher with the Departamento de Oceanografia e Pescas, Universidade dos Açores, came on board with us. Thanks to her we caught and tagged our first loggerhead turtle of Team 3. Volunteers saw Ana in action taking samples from the loggerhead, including barnacle scrapings and the turtle crabs. Most loggerheads have one or two crabs that live underneath the shell of the turtle close to the anus in a symbiotic relationship. The crabs clean, and the turtles provide protection.

The team did a terrific job again with big rolling waves and choppy seas today. We were treated to 20 common dolphins only a half hour from the harbour, then spent the rest of the day bouncing in between fin whales (6 in all), blue whales (2), and a humpback whale. The humpback was not bothered by the boat at all; matter of fact, he was downright photogenic. He fluked very close straight towards the boat, and then fluked very close going away from the boat, giving us some excellent ID pictures. (Thanks Ann for letting me post your pictures!)

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Due to bad weather at sea, Sunday was a shore day for the group. Seven of us – Manuel, Flávio, Mónica, Diana, Sue, Lisa and I – spent our morning alongside the locals in Almoxarife participating in Faial’s Beach Clean.

Organised every year, teams of volunteers meet at the island’s beaches to pick up debris that’s either been washed up from the Atlantic or left behind by locals. At the end of the two-hour clean, all the trash is piled up in the centre of town as a monument to the volunteers’ efforts. It’s amazing what a big difference a few volunteers can make. And I admit, it was really an honour to work alongside the Faialenses and be able to give back to this beautiful island community where we are privileged to work.

Yesterday, Monday, well, I just have to say well done Team Three! It was a difficult day at sea with a rocking boat and challenging sea conditions. We had two long encounters with two blue whales, totalling four animals to add to the catalogue. En route to a group of sperm whales we saw a small group of Risso’s dolphins.

Before we arrived at the sperm whales, a report of a humpback whale came in. When this changed to TWO humpbacks, we changed our course and went down to photograph them. They were actually at the mouth of the harbour – at one point only about 100 meters off of Monte da Guia. They were magnificent to watch, with their 5 meter long flippers that we could see under water.

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Team three arrived Thursday, and wasn’t able to go out to sea on our first scheduled day because of high winds (Team 2 knows what I am talking about!) Today, Saturday, was our first day out and we made up for lost time.

What a day! Our group saw seven blue whales. We also saw eleven sei whales, nine badly behaved sperm whales who chose not to fluke, two fin whales, one turtle and about 80 common dolphins. The second to last blue whale did fluke for us; it’s very rare that they do, but we’ve got pictures and a video to prove it

Martina was our super spotter today, with our first sighting of the day. With only eight team members, and three of them feeding the fish at the back of the boat, yours truly was “water girl” (most of the time). Kudos to all team members for filling in for others as they dropped down to the back deck one by one. And special thanks to Ann, who wrote up the POPA transects and a staggering amount of random cetacean sightings by herself on the first day!

Marília was our photographer today, and she did a great job. There were lots of Portuguese man-of-war in the water, and she captured this really nice one for the team. Actually, all of these pictures are hers.

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We have four “placements” with us on this group, Masters Students from the University that have joined the expedition as part of our capacity-building efforts. On all projects Biosphere Expeditions tries to give back to the community by using local services, guides, resources and food, as well as educating and empowering locals. Marília, Mónica, Manuel and Flávio are a great addition to our team.

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