In the springtime, baleen whales will stop off in the Azores to feed on their way to the Arctic, where they spend the summer. So the Azores is a snack bar, if you will. So normally, in the summer here now, the main whales I’d be expecting to see on a week long trip are Sperm Whales, which are resident, and maybe a baleen whale, which has decided to hang around a bit longer, and possibly a beaked whale, if we’re fortunate, with really calm weather. However, in the last couple of years, we’ve seen a significant number of baleen whales, particularly Sei Whales, actually staying in these waters throughout the summer.
So so far on my trip, I’ve seen Sei whales, but I’ve also seen a Humpback which was surrounded by a pod of Spotted Dolphins and Cory’s shearwaters, all really busy feeding, Sperm Whales, but today, we saw a strange whale that took us a while to ID. It looked like a Sei whale, but the fin wasn’t quite right.
And also the behavior was different from a Sei which normally just come up once and then down again for five or six minutes. This one came up more frequently and actually circled around our boat for 45 minutes, always keeping a distance of 100 meters or so, but we were still getting a good look at it.
It wasn’t a Fin whale because there was no white marking on the right hand side of the lower jaw, which is a diagnostic feature. It wasn’t a Bryde’s Whale because they have three clear ridges on the top of their head, which this one didn’t have. So what was it?
Well, sending photos off to our experts on shore, they believe it was a say, hybridized with the blue now, Blue Whales breeding with other large whales can happen, but not much is known about it. And in fact, a recent examination of the genetics of the North Atlantic blue whale population, so individuals that we could see here in the Azores has revealed that there are unusually high levels of Fin whale DNA found in the blue whale genome. And not only that, but the resulting hybrids are fertile.
So we’re still learning so much about these fantastic creatures. We think that what we saw was a Sei hybridized with a Blue, all of the sightings get recorded.
We’re seeing more baleen whales than normal. But I don’t know what we’re going to see each day. Who knows what we’re going to see? Whether it could be a Spectacle Porpoise or an unusual hybrid, I never know. And tomorrow is another day.
Sara
This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 72 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here.
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