Dear Readers, we were of course delighted to see shedloads of sperm whales and several pods of bottlenosed dolphins today, but for me, the big excitement was a close encounter with a pair of fin whales. These are the second largest animals on earth after the blue whale, with a maximum length of 85 feet long. That little fin that you see on the back is a long, long way back on the whale’s body (see the image below) so, just as with an iceberg, what you see above the surface gives you no real idea of the size of the animal below.

Image from The International Whaling Commission athttps://iwc.int/about-whales/whale-species/fin-whale

One way to identify a fin whale is by that unusual asymmetric colouration on the lower lip – it’s white on the right side, and dark on the left side. We couldn’t see it clearly from the boat, but some conservation divers who are collecting data on the whales of the Azores managed to spot this distinguishing feature.

Fin whales really are built for speed – known as ‘the greyhound of the seas’, it regularly maintains speeds of 25 m.p.h, with bursts of up to 30 m.p.h. The two that we saw were not in a hurry but were still moving at a fair pace.

When we first saw the whales we thought that they might be blue whales, until we saw the distinctive lip colour. However, fin and blue whale hybrids do occur as their ranges overlap and clearly their customs and genetics are close enough to produce viable (though probably sterile) offspring. We know so little about these extraordinary animals.

When underwater, these whales are distinctly blue, which adds to the confusion.

Well, seeing these creatures made my day, and seeing a whole host of sperm whales only added to a great day. My back is aching from all that bouncing around on the RIB boat, my hair looks like Crystaltips from the children’s cartoon and I’m caked in a fine layer of salt, but it’s completely worth it. Only one more day to go before we head home, so let’s see what tomorrow brings…

Crystal Tipps and her dog Alistair

A whole gang of sperm whales (all male)