Tuesday 10.11.09 Bay of Biscay

When we wake at 6:45, the ship is somewhere just South of the Ouessant. At breakfast we are joined by common dolphins outside the window. It’s a large pod, present over a 5 mile transect or for about as long as it takes me to eat a fry up (two of everything). We run into a fellow whale watcher. We met whilst marine mammal surveying on this same route earlier in the year. He is bit of an expert and explains how the dolphins will be calculating at which point of the ships course they can head her off. This is easier to witness in calm waters when it is possible to see dolphins from all directions and distances converge on a single point, the ships hull. So they can not only use sonar to calculate the ships location, but also its speed and direction of movement in order to predict where they will meet it; all from underwater several kilometres away. For me this is an insight into what adept and intelligent hunters dolphins must be. Later, during his survey from the bridge, our friend witnesses a single gannet dive on a food source, which is joined by a dolphin and then a pod and then more and more small pods arriving from further a field to spark a feeding frenzy. To him, this arrival of dolphins to a food source at different times suggests that they are hunting in loose spread out packs over a large area. This could be a higher yielding strategy used in areas of minimal fish stocks (like the English Channel).After breakfast we observe from the shelter of the stern until the cold gets the better of us at 11am. A second stint on the stern produces a lovely close view of a great shearwater.

After lunch, we watch for another two hours until by 3pm the Cornish coast is up on the horizon. Then somewhere between us and what I had decided could be the Lizard peninsular, I catch sight of an inverted wave breaking upwards against thin air. It occurs again a second later, in the same place. I lift up my binoculars and hold my breathe, pause, and then see it clearly; two more wispy blows, that judging from their small size are likely to be of a minkie whale. I scan the water surface for further confirmation; it does not come. Instead we take those four blows as a signal to end our expedition as it began, with the exhalation of a distant giant.