Saturday, the 14th

Last Friday Mário had to leave which left only me and Ana on the boat. On Friday we didn't go out because I had to sort out some things on board (namely the water pump that was broken meaning with had no tap water on board) and because the bus that was supposed to take Mário to Évora never came, I had to get to Tunes and leave him on a train.

Two people on board means we can only try and sample from Clavadel using the large pole, but fortunately on Saturday two heavyweight crew members came to the rescue. My father and one of his friends, João Mendes, decided to come and help for the day. Given they are both experienced seamen and that both know this boat quite well, I envisaged a quiet day where I could focus more on getting the samples from the dolphins and worry less about boat stuff.

We set course to the commons spot with very little wind and a flat sea. At some point, Mendes spotted a dolphin on the starboard. As I looked at it I soon realized it wasn't a dolphin, and on closer inspection it revealed to actually be a Minke Whale. It was relatively small individual and was a bit suspicious of the boat, even though it circled several times around us as if inspecting us. We took some pictures, and we could see the white belly as the animal turned underneath the boat.














We continued our way to the dolphins spot seeing the whale slowly swimming away. This is the 4th cetacean species that I've seen this year. The first were the bottlenose, then two harbour porpoises we saw on our first day, the commons, and now the minke. Not bad for a week in the sea! Once in the dolphin spot we took a while to find the first group, which led some of us to think they might not be there that day. But eventually we did find them at a distance and decided to move there. Curiously, a whale-watching boat operating in the area saw our change in direction and stopped to see if they could see anything. They eventually did and moved straight to their position as if they were a cruise missile! As we got there we realized it was actually a big groups separated into smaller groups and so we could carry out our sampling activities away from other boats. However, just as on Wednesday, they seem to be not the least interested in our boat, and we spent around 3 hours changing groups and/or waiting for behaviour to change and got only 1 sample. At some point, the wind was getting stronger and it was just very hard to manoeuvre the dingy and to avoid water getting inside in big waves. The fact that we were 4 on board meant that Ana could come in the dingy and take photographs of the animals.And she did indeed!!As Mendes put it, she fired the camera as if it was a machine gun! We eventually ran out of space in the memory card (4 Gb) and out of battery. So there are really only photographs of dolphins (and the occasional water!) from this day. This was very good, and at the end of the day I got the impression some of them I had already photographed last year.

(Commons breeding off Portimão)

Stronger wind means that we could come back to port on sail, thus saving some fuel. As I had someone I could rely on to sail the boat, I took my chance and rested for a bit while coming back (this actualy means sleep!) a rare commodity that I cannot afford the luxury to have often on board!