According to Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Hadoram Shirihai and Brett Jarrett
‘The toothed Sperm Whale is the largest of the toothed whales and virtually unmistakeable with its enormous box like head’
Imagine our excitement when half way through the first day of our trip, half way across the gap between Lanzarote and Fuerteventura I saw a huge splash of a Sperm Whale breaching followed by 10 minutes of it leisurely swimming along – in every respect it matched the book description and at one stage was no more than 10 metres from the boat
So what do you see on the surface
- Very long log like body up to 18 metres in length – Velvet Lady is 17 metres and this one was longer than the boat
- Likes to spend about 10 minutes on the surface leisurely swimming along
- Distinct rounded hump – appeared to us like a fin – 2/3 way along the body
- Bushy blow always directed at a low angle to the left – we saw this 6 or 7 times
- The huge box like head is rarely visible above water, but here in Lanzarote the water was so clear that you could easily make out the shape of the head underwater
We don’t often spot whales in Lanzarote although clearly they are there, you need to be in the right place at the right time and watching very closely. There is nothing like one sighting though to focus the mind, and so 3 days later we were really pleased to have another sighting of an as yet unidentified whale and also 2 more Risso’s dolphins
This week the weather was not in our favour and prevented us from circumnavigating the island, although we still managed 117 miles – the whale sightings more than made up for this, because if the weather had been right we would never have been off Fuerteventura in the first place!
We will certainly be keeping our eyes open over the next few weeks.
Whilst the weather did not allow us to sail up to Graciosa, once the wind died down we did manage Puerto Calero and Arrecife together with a trip around Lobos on the last day. With strong southerly winds we were safely tucked into Marina Rubicon, watching the waves breaking over the breakwater. No one was moving, but Puerto Calero had even strung a line across the harbour entrance to stop anyone attempting to leave/enter. All trips are weather dependent and all you can do is make the most of it. It was very windy, but also dry and sunny so instead of having a day off visiting in Graciosa, our guests hired a car and toured many of the islands inshore attractions. They even took a drive up to the viewpoint to look across at Graciosa and as the wind was gusting at 45 knots with white water in the strait immediately understood why we were not going to get there!
We still aim to circumnavigate Lanzarote in our coming weeks, and the weather has improved already. Why not join us in our search for whales
- We have just had a cancellation for health reasons on the week from 30 January until 6 February, so there is once again space for a couple to join us on that trip as opposed to only a single male that the website previously advertised
- There is also space from 9 – 16 February and 20 – 27 February, but only one last space in March for an individual Female
See you onboard
