At Sea to Western Sahara
The time at sea on a voyage is not merely time to nap, read or catch up on journals and photo-editing. There are presentations to attend to learn about the region in which we are travelling. There are excellent meals to savor and linger over. But there is only one aspect of this day that is fixed in my mind as I sit at the computer to type. I do not remember what I ate for breakfast, lunch or dinner but all were very enjoyable meals. I am sure there were some excellent presentations, but even now I do not recall what subjects they covered. But I will reflect on this day on many occasions in the future when searching for a point of reference because today provided one of the finest days of opportunistic encounters with marine mammals I have experienced.
When travelling on board National Geographic Explorer, we often expect to see whales and dolphins and frequently take the ship to locations where experience tells us we will find these animals. But an ocean passage does not have the same predictable concentrations of wildlife. We set out on a day at sea to scan for wildlife from the bridge or open decks with an optimistic sense of hope and expectation. And while travelling on a ship at about 15 miles per hour, there is a tendency to think that nothing happens fast. But the unexpected can happen at any time and today the unexpected happened many times.
A combination of calm weather conditions and productive waters off the West African coast produced a superb series of marine mammal sightings. The day started well with an awesome group of hundreds (perhaps five to seven hundred) spinner dolphins charging at the surface – a sufficiently large group of animals that they were clearly visible on radar. Close by a small group of short-finned pilot whales surfaced. And from this great start things continued to improve. By the early evening we had seen a total of eight species of marine mammals; including some great looks at sei and sperm whales and even a glimpse of the rarely observed Cuvier’s beaked whales. And in the late afternoon, just when it seemed that the day could hardly get better, a large blow in the distance provoked a stream of radio chatter between observers on the bridge and the deck. It was as if no-one could quite believe it and almost no-one dared to say it but we all knew what we were seeing – two blue whales. We slowed and turned and the vessel and obtained great looks at these animals, the largest animal species ever and a rare sighting in the North Atlantic. We then resumed our heading for Western Sahara knowing that whale watching during a day at sea will never be quite the same again.
