Azores: After the wind, a couple of surprises!

After a few days of windy weather when we were unable to get to sea, we were finally back out on 9 September. We headed to the south of Pico, since the sea was going to be calmer there. We were lucky the whales were in an area without rain showers. I was expecting to see the “Whitehead” group, since it was the area they had been for a couple of months now. But much to my surprise it was the “1019” group!! I was able to get three out of five flukes from the adults, with colleagues getting one of the other individuals. “1019” was first seen in 1988, but then not again until 2006, when she was observed with “3186” and they have been seen together ever since. This group was first seen in 2020 in the middle of June for a week and then they vanished. September is a more typical time of year for them to turn up in the Azores, but they have sometimes been seen earlier. I do not know where they have been for the past 2.5 months, I will have to wait for photos from São Miguel and Pico to see if they were sighted there in the meantime. I do not think they would have gone down to the Canaries and back again in this time. They have been observed in the Canaries during the winter one year. We also saw a shy group of striped dolphin and a small group of feeding common dolphin. As we crossed the channel towards Faial, a rain shower finally caught up with us and although it didn’t last very long, it was very wet while it lasted!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On 10 September we were also back to the south of Pico, this time because no animals had been seen in the north, by the time we left. I wondered if we were going to see the “1019” group again, since they usually hang around for a while before continuing on their way. It was not to be, but there was another surprise. The “Nike” group, which is usually seen on the south of Pico most of the summer, was back in their usual area. I photographed one individual of this group to the north of the islands in the middle of July and have been expecting them to turn up on the south ever since. I did not see “Nike” herself or one other individual of the group, but did manage to photograph three adults and “Nike’s” 2018 calf. Getting a good photo of this individual was excellent, because I only had a photo of 3/4 of the fluke from 2018 from a side fluke photo. The matching program found the match straight away though, so now I have a full fluke photo to carry on with.

We also saw a pair of sei whales milling around, possibly feeding at depth. One of them was quite thin. This time of year, the whales should be finding a lot of food to fill out the “hollows” caused by not eating for four months or so while they are on their breeding ground. Hopefully it will find enough food over the next few months to survive. Both of the sei whales had nicks on the top of their dorsal fins at the leading edge, rather than the trailing edge. This type of nick is usually caused by monofilament line, slicing through the dorsal fin. We didn’t spot any dolphins and unfortunately missed a sighting of a whale shark. It disappeared about five minutes before we arrived to the area.