Tag: wildlife conservation holiday

Our first group is over, and most of the team has gone home. Our last day on the water showed us both the highs and the lows of being on a research team. In the morning we were lucky in our sightings – sperm whales with newborns, more fin whales, and a species not often seen here: false killer whales. We then spent the entire afternoon without any sightings, following transect after transect listening for, and not finding, a last sperm whale.

We did manage to take a group picture, and Axel designed and painted our 2012 Biosphere Expeditions mural on the wharf.

Thank you very much group 1! I’m looking forward to the group 2’s arrival on Saturday.

Update from our whale and dolphin volunteer vacation / conservation holiday around the Azores archipelago

Today the joke on board the Physeter was “common fin whales” because we usually see a lot of common dolphins, and today every whale we saw was a fin whale! It was also a key day for dolphins – a lone common dolphin bow riding a large fin whale kept letting us know the location of the whale, even when the large male changed direction. Then, just outside the harbour we spotted a new species for this slot, the bottlenose dolphin. Congratulations to Axel, today’s photographer, for setting a new record for the number of photographs taken (1000+!)

Update from our whale and dolphin volunteer vacation / conservation holiday around the Azores archipelago

Bad weather at sea kept us on land yesterday, giving us a chance to catch up on data entry as well as our rest. Seas between the islands were still quite rough today, and had us hanging quite firmly onto the railings. It was another eventful day, beginning with a pair of male sperm whales that had both stopwatch teams timing the blow rates. Unfortunately, they did not cooperate and give us a grand fluke ending their performance, but simply disappeared.

The other whales we saw (sei whales, fin whales and a blue whale) were equally uncooperative, giving us a merry chase with the catamaran and teaching to expect the unexpected when looking for whales. We saw two loggerhead turtles, which also eluded us for tagging.

The teams are working well together, and everyone has mastered the record keeping, making our scientist Lisa Steiner very happy.

Update from our volunteer vacation / conservation holiday protecting whales, dolphins and turtles around the Azores archipelago

We’re just off the water and Tim was our Super-Spotter of the day. He spotted the two dolphin fins that led us to a group of common dolphins. We photographed them and recorded pertinent data, then enjoyed their frolicking around the boat for a few moments before we changed course in search of other cetaceans. On the way back to the harbour Tim then spotted a turtle. Quite impressive given that the sea was rather rough and the turtle less than the size of a dinner plate. Irina was a fabulous photographer as you’ll see below.

Update from our volunteer vacation / conservation holiday protecting whales, dolphins and turtles around the Azores archipelago.

All of team 1 arrived in time for lunch at Peter’s. It’s been the warmest day so far (20 degrees C) and the sun was shining strong.

The team met this afternoon to talk about expedition procedures, safety, and base camp ins-and-outs. Our biologist Lisa Steiner gave a brief overview of the research and how important our work is here in the Azores. We are all quite excited to head out onto the water tomorrow.

In the morning we’ll have a briefing on how to use the equipment, the data we need to collect, and how we record the data. After lunch we’ll head to the Physeter, our research vessel, and go out to sea. Many people in our group are not sure if they get seasick or not…luckily we’ll only be on the water for a half a day, and the pharmacy is only a few meters away!

We decided to cook dinner ourselves here at base in a group effort. Four year old Tiago, the son of the Banana Manor base owners, entertained us all with visits to meet the goats, and showed us our first whale sighting (on land, on his pedal bike).

Update from our volunteer vacation / conservation holiday protecting whales, dolphins and turtles around the Azores archipelago.