Santa Monica

We got a lift to the southern end of the island to Lacacao in one of Natura's 4x4s. The divers at the local hotel gave us a lift out to the rib which was still on it's mooring (thankfully... if it had gone adrift: next stop Brazil). We headed northwest towards Santa Monica where we want to spend a few days, following reports of many whales there. Santa Monica is usually out of reach for us as it is a long transit from Sal Rei past some dodgy reefs and shallow water which are exposed to the northeasterly wind and swell. We only encountered one whale there having put in about 7 hours of driving and about 60km of mileage. We could not find the animal again after seeing just two blows. We made over one hour of whale song recordings, with two whales singing a duet at one stage.

After a long day with no photo IDs or biopsies, we were about to pick up our mooring when we spotted a mother and calf about 200m from it!... apparently these whales had been there 'all day' .... sometimes nature is just cruel. We tried to track these whales but they disappeared into the glare and we had only 20 minutes or so before our lift back to the beach (on the diving boat which is landed at about 20knots onto the sand) was no longer on offer. We will return to Lacacao and will spend more time near our mooring this time. If conditions allow we plan to make the 40km journey back to Sal Rei tomorrow afternoon. We plan to close the circle by going to Lacacao the other way over the weekend (i.e. around the north and east coast of Boa Vista) as the forecast looks good. These are areas where very little (if any) search effort for humpbacks has been made in the past.

Bird List: Magnificent Frigatebird, red-billed tropicbird, white-faced storm petrel, Madeiran storm petrel, Cape Verde shearwater, brown boobie, black-winged stilt, bar-tailed godwit, Kentish plover, turnstone, cattle egret, hoopoe lark, Iago sparrow, brown-necked raven.

Needle fish and flying fish were abundant all day.