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Sperm Whales Dominica (1 Viewer)

T

tyson

Well-known member
I did a trip Recently to Dominica with a company called Picture Adventure(www.pictureadventure.com). Fantastic trip and great guide Patrick Dykstra a long with Andrew Armour.

We saw 2 Beaked Whales, Pantropical Spotted & Fraiser's Dolphins & we observed lots of Sperm Whales under water over the 6days. We saw several Sperm Whale breaches and observed 7 of them sleeping vertically underwater right underneath us.

Chris
 

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tyson said:
We saw 2 Beaked Whales, Pantropical Spotted & Fraiser's Dolphins & we observed lots of Sperm Whales under water over the 6days. We saw several Sperm Whale breaches and observed 7 of them sleeping vertically underwater right underneath us.

Chris
Click to expand...
Really interesting! I knew whales had to sleep, like any other kind of mammal, but didn't know they did it tail-down. How often do they come up for air? Do they do so while still asleep?
 
njlarsen said:
Tyson,
thanks for sharing. Do you know the id of the beaked whale?

Niels
Click to expand...

I've been told it's most likely to be a Gervais. I have a video of it as well so I need to get that looked at by a couple of people but apparently it's impossible to get a definite ID of a beaked whale if you don't see the head.
 
Peter C. said:
Really interesting! I knew whales had to sleep, like any other kind of mammal, but didn't know they did it tail-down. How often do they come up for air? Do they do so while still asleep?
Click to expand...

The whales would come up to the surface and rest there for 10-15minutes and then they would go under and move to a vertical position for 10-20minutes. They kept repeating this.

When you were looking down at them asleep vertically they did look like some kind of alien ghost
 
There was one whale which set off to move away from us. We decided to follow it and we swam a long side it for around 10minutes. It was hard work but the whale kept letting us catch up to it and we would be swimming eye to eye before it got Infront again.

When we ran out of energy and as soon as we stopped, the whale dived.

Not a cheap trip but worth every penny and swimming in the carribean sea was comfortable enough. It was warm, clear and calm most days. With it being salt water it helps keep you a-float.
 
tyson said:
I've been told it's most likely to be a Gervais. I have a video of it as well so I need to get that looked at by a couple of people but apparently it's impossible to get a definite ID of a beaked whale if you don't see the head.
Click to expand...

Beaked whales are probably the most difficult Cetaceans to identify. Some of the baleen whales are tricky but not quite in the same way as beaked whales, the issue with these is they are all rather similar, some species groups can generally only be identified from seeing the head of a male for instance.

Size can be helpful but only in larger species, smaller animals could just be juveniles of larger species.
 
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