It seems that most of the humpbacks have left the sheltered waters around Baia de Sal Rei which has been our main hunting ground the last few weeks. After a day off ashore on Sunday we had no sightings yesterday (Monday) or today (Tuesday), and no sightings from the whalewatching boats either. Today we went back to Santa Monica Bay to the south and although there were no sightings we did record a singer ! He (presumably a male) stopped singing after 3-4 minutes but did not surface near us and was never seen, or heard, again.
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| Darren and Pedrin |
So many thanks to José, Juan and Natura but especially
Pedro López-Suárez, our host who has looked after us so well. Another successful campaign, especially by Conor and Darren who put the time and effort in and justly got there deserves. As the humpback whales head north to Iceland, Norway (and maybe Ireland !!) we wonder what will wait them in Cape Verde on there return. Tourism development is still developing fast, with the hotel at Lacacao (below) now open since I was here last year and a huge 5 star hotel starting to be built at Santa Monica with 2,000 beds !!
We hope the people of Boavista and Cape Verde can make room for the humpback whales and other magnificent and often unique wildlife in the Cape Verde Islands and provide a 5 star wildlife watching experience to visitors to Cape Verde so many can experience the amazing spectacles we have witnessed during our research.
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| Humpback waving goodbye !!! |
Simon Berrow
Good work and our whales have left us too. I really do wonder if some of the whales from your area cross over into ours. We have so many whales 70% that are not matched anywhere in the eastern Atlantic. How can we get access to your whale flukes? Ours are all on Flickr now.
ReplyDeleteHi Whales Bermuda. All of our fluke shots go to Allied Whale for matching. So far we have had no matches with western Atlantic whales, only between Cape Verde and Azores, Iceland and Norway. Never say never though! We are running genetic analysis on biopsies and comparing them to samples from projects JONAH and MONAH too, but have to wait a little longer before these results are out.
ReplyDeleteGreat work as ever lads. Really enjoyed reading the blog over the past 2 months. Looking forward to any more sightings matches and whale season of our own.
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