13.03.2023 – Same place, different time

What a day! Our tours were filled with delightful encounters with pods of Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and Short-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) and, in contrast to the previous days, the animals weren’t too difficult to find! On the contrary, our team left the animals in one tour only to return to the same area for the next tour to find them there again.

This was especially true for the hunting parties of Short-beaked common dolphins. These gorgeous dolphins spent the day leaping and frolicking in the same place, which was probably due to the fact that their planktivorous prey, the Halfbeaks (Hemiramphus balao), had found a convenient spot where currents brought them a lot of zooplankton to gorge on. The area happened to be around 4 nautical miles offshore in waters almost 2km deep. This is where we tend to have most of our sightings of smaller dolphin species, including several sightings of Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) in summer feeding on Snipefish (Macroramphosus scolopax) another plantivorous schooling fish. 

Bottlenose dolphins tend to try their luck closer to the coast and we found the same two pods cruising one mile offshore the entire day. It was a marvellous day out on the ocean!

By Paula Thake

Sightings of the day

Stenella

09:30 Bottlenose dolphins, Short-beaked common dolphins

13:30 Bottlenose dolphins, Short-beaked common dolphins

16:00 Bottlenose dolphins, Short-beaked common dolphins