13.07.2024 – Need for Speed

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about speed. This is because of two facts. Firstly, I found out that flying fish reach a top speed of 70 km/h, which means they actually move slightly quicker than many people do on the via rapida. Secondly, our top speed on Stenella tours (25 knots) matches (or would have matched) the top speed of the Titanic. These facts have unnerved me. Are we really so slow? Do the animals ever laugh at us for having to build pathetic machines to go at (what to them) must seem like snails pace? Certainly, the Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stenella frontalis) we watched today were giggling. Swimming at their fastest, they match us (and the Titanic) at 25 knots. Their cousins, the common dolphins (Delphinus delphis), are the true speed demons of the cetacean world, cruising and being able to outswim us at 34 knots. In my opinion, it adds to the beauty of an encounter to know full well that the animal is choosing to stay with us. Having said that all this talk of speed has me in need of a bit of a slow down, luckily on today’s evening tour we also met one of Madeira’s slowest moving marine movers, the Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Carreta carreta).

by Peter Worth

Sightings of the Day

Stenella

0930 Atlantic Spotted Dolphin, Bottlenose Dolphin, Rough Toothed Dolphin

1400 Rough Toothed Dolphin

1700 Atlantic spotted dolphins, Loggerhead Sea Turtle

Ribeira Brava

0930 Bottlenose Dolphin, Rough Toothed Dolphin

1330 Rough Toothed Dolphin