Song of the Whale Diary: 14th - 18th September

Sunday 14th September
Monday 15th September
Tuesday 16th September
Wednesday, 17th September
Thursday 18th September

Sunday 14th September
Written by Bridget
We leave our anchorage at Ribiera Brava at about 7.30 and start to travel on our pre-determined tracklines for the day – most of which is spent in front of Madeira’s capital, Funchal. During the afternoon we see spotted dolphins and a Bryde’s whale – the first sightings for both our competition winners and the film crew. We are hoping that this bode’s well for the week… Towards evening we come across a long, dirty line of rubbish that we think is worth recording on video but no sooner have we decided to break from our survey effort than Aidan spots a blow about 500 metres away! We spend the next two hours with two Bryde’s whales and many, many bottlenose dolphins – providing us with not only good photo-id pictures but the opportunity for the film crew to get good footage as well.

Monday 15th September
Written by Aidan
We leave the anchorage at Ribiera Brava at about 8 in the morning. Some beaked whales are heard very early on which is promising. Having logged the position where we hear the beaked whales, we run an experiment to try and triangulate the position. After several passes nothing has been seen or heard so we carry on the tracklines. A Bryde’s whale appears and some good footage and some excellent photos are taken. About 4pm, we receive a call from Filipe from the Madeira Whale Museum saying a fishing boat has spotted some beaked whales roughly 3 miles south from Ribiera Brava. So we set off, on the way spotting a very large pod of over 50 bottlenose dolphins. We create another experiment at the point where the whales have been spotted but nothing is heard. The film crew then go up in the crow’s nest to get some shots from up there.

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Tuesday 16th September
Written by Astrid
After a whole night’s sleep at nearby Ribiera Brava, Mat heaves up the anchor, together with Olly and Aidan and we head towards our “hot spot area” of seeing whales and dolphins and hearing beaked whales towards the south of Funchal. Unfortunately we do not see anything interesting, except some plastic and glass bottles. As the weather starts to deteriorate, we decide this would be a good opportunity to go to Desertas Grande island again (southeast of Madeira), arriving at 2pm at our anchorage next to the huge and impressive cliff face. Olly and I get into the dinghy and go to check out with the rangers Filipe and Pedro from the Parque Natural da Madeira if it is possible for a party of us to go to the top of the cliffs. Filipe says he can take us that afternoon – fantastic! And the weather is improving too! We get ready (with Mat and Bridget having volunteered to ‘boat sit’) and the rest of us start the steep ascent to the top! It is absolutely amazing! There is no cloud anymore and the sun is shining on us! The view is awesome and the big SOTW in the bay gets smaller and smaller as we climb up and up. Respect to Andreas and Stefan, the German film crew, who are carrying a heavy camera. But it is worth it - they are not disappointed with the pictures they get and neither are we.

We just make it back in time to the boat for another brilliant sunset and a lovely dinner from Bridget, which we really deserve after this great walk! You can imagine that the sea legs are ready to go the bed early today, but even they enjoyed getting exercise on land and stretching out a bit!

Wednesday, 17th September
Written by Astrid
The night is quiet (inside and outside of the boat) until 6:45 in the morning. My anchor watch is almost done, when the wind picks up from 3 to 29 knots in a matter of minutes! Heavy rain starts and I realise our anchor is dragging. We heave it up in the howling wind and drop it again. All is good after that and so Bridget and Mat go to shore for a look around. The weather improves quickly and so late morning we sail back to the south of Madeira, to where we heard beaked whales the other day. Yes, they really do exist in Madeira! They are not an illusion! For, in the afternoon Nienke shouts “Beaked Whale Sighting! - 112 Degrees, 350 metres away!” Of course we head immediately towards these difficult to spot animals. We get very good recordings, for over 15 minutes and we are able to photograph them too. Later we decide that the species is Blainville’s beaked whale. We drift the whole night around this location at about 2000m depth and get a lot of dolphins blowing on the surface next to the ship and whistling and clicking loudly on our hydrophone! And we again record beaked whales! Amazing!!

Thursday 18th September
Written by John
We decide that it would be useful to photo ID the sperm whales that we are hearing persistently on the hydrophone. However it is not to be, as whilst Olly is re jigging the equipment to source their location, in comes a sighting about a trio of beaked whales! We set off to investigate… On the way we see a good 12 or so pilot whales lazing about in the sun along with a few mothers and calves, but sadly when we get to the location where the beaked whales were spotted we don’t see them. Next thing we know, another sighting is radioed in from the local whale watching boat, so off we shoot again. Again we get up close with another species – this time a Bryde’s whale which pops up less than 20 meters away from the boat! We get some beautiful photos! And then a rare magical moment as a pod of dolphins devour a shoal of tuna right in front of us - splashing all over the place and making a right racket on the hydrophone. Bad weather then cuts short our search time and we go to seek refuge in Funchal harbour.