|26-05-2019 am| A morning full of Odontoceti: Sperm whales, Risso's and Stripped dolphins
The day started early for us: Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) were found in the North of Faial Island. We dressed up and went North.
The pod was composed by females and was shallow diving, and traveling.
It was an impressive pod of large female Sperm whales, under a great spring light. Finally we moved to find some Risso's dolphins (Grampus griseus).
The pod was resting and socializing. We noticed that there were some old individuals as they were almost completely white (Risso's dolphins are born dark-grey and they turn white as they grow due to the scars that they get while socializing with their own group). Some images were collected for photo-identification purposes.
As there were more species in the area we left the Risso's and went to see some Striped dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba).
The pod was hunting and going fast, so was hard to have a good sighting of the animal's body, but we could see perfectly the fish chasing. We didn't want to be in the middle of that frenzy, so we went back to the Sperm whales as almost all the other boats had already left.
When we arrived we found the previous pod for a while and then we decided to leave, but 3 more animals were arriving, so we waited a bit more. They came pretty close to our boat helping us to see them in detail.
At the end all of us were excited about this sunny trip plenty of animals.
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