Chatting with Steve Geelhoed
Last July we had the pleasure to welcome with us E. Steve Geelhoed, founder and currently one of the main researchers in seabirds and marine mammals at Wageningen Marine Research Center in the Netherlands.
I leave you below a short text written by himself, after several cetacean observation trips made with us.
Whale watching with Picos do Aventura:
Our guide shouts “Blow!” In front of us, in the distance a blow is visible for a brief moment. My first impression is that it is directed forwards. “ Sperm Whale?” A second distant blow, aimed at the sun, almost immediately followed by a dark surfacing body with a high fin leaves no doubt. It is a Sei Whale.
The skipper carefully manoeuvres the boat towards the whale. It disappears. To our surprise it surfaces again, much closer than before. It disappears again, with the dorsal fin typically visible as last part. The whale is feeding in the upper layer of the water.
We can see it’s footprints on the surface and sometimes even it’s shape underwater. Not everyone sees it though. A whale watching boat overtakes us and heads towards the footprints. We warn them. They fall back in the crescent shaped armada of whale watching vessels. Seven in total, all waiting for the whale to come up again. Unlike other Sei Whales I’ve seen, this individual showed itself well for more than half an hour. For me this was the high light of a few whale watching trips with Picos do Aventura early July. We saw Atlantic Spotted, Common and Bottlenose Dolphins on most trips. Not bad at all!
Steve Geelhoed
