After the successful sperm whale encounter, we next headed out south of Pico, this time in search baleen whales. There had been reports of ‘blows’ several miles off the coast of Pico, so who can pass up that opportunity?
Our mission was briefly interrupted by a wonderful encounter with some common dolphins, surfing in the waves and playing around the boat – a great start to any Sunday morning. Our photographer for the day (Martin) was duly put through his paces.
With our skipper (Jairo) then spotting a blow, it was time to move on. In building seas, large baleen whales are not the easiest to find, but when you have three fin whales blowing together it makes things a little easier. Spotting them was the easy bit – another new record for the 2019 expedition. We followed them into the oncoming waves and wind that tested the resolve of all on board and made it tricky to get the ID photos.
The last couple of days have been on shore, working on images and yet more data. The team have already matched three of the sperm whales seen on Saturday to previous encounters in 2013 and 2008 – yet more small but important pieces of the puzzle.
Rui Prieto from the Azores Whale Lab also came over to the expedition base, to give a talk on his wider cetacean research and how some of the data being collected by the project is being used. And in other good news…he recovered his D-Tag (see previous blog).
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