Bash! – does the Sperm whale fluke

by firmm Team

Text: Melanie Fraundorfer, photos: firmm

It doesn’t matter how many or how often we saw them recently, my heart always beats a little bit faster when I hear Katharina’s voice through the loudspeakers: “We have spotted a sperm whale blow”. Also on this special day we were lucky to peacefully observe a resting sperm whale next to our boat. As soon as the animal dove, we spotted yet another blow. Just before we had the chance to get closer, it seemed as though he would descend. We could see his fluke. But then something incredible happened. The sperm whale lifted his giant fluke out of the water once again and slapped it down onto the surface of the water. Bash! And he did it over and over again. We could hear the loud splashes. Bash! Our guests and the crew members watched the majestic animal with undivided attention. Bash! After several minutes he dove down in an unhurried manner, just in front of our eyes.

Sperm whale tailslapping 

Wow, what a unique experience! This beautiful whale showed us a behaviour that we have only rarely observed in Sperm whales in the Strait of Gibraltar. We know this behaviour which is called lobtailing or tailslapping to date mostly from the much smaller dolphins and pilot whales. Why they do it is not fully understood until now. Some scientists believe that the whales use it for communication. Others suggest that it serves the animals to get rid of parasites. In any case, it was really spectacular to watch! Still totally impressed, we detected a little bit later the Sperm whale we have named “Observador”. He is especially curious and also this time he lifted his head out of the water with interest. It was exciting to see how Observador swam to our boot, watched us and dove back into the lonely depth. We also saw a cute, little “Loggerhead Turtle” passing our boot, stretching her head inquisitively towards us.

Observador Caretta caretta 

After that, we saw two more Sperm whales. One of them was Cicatriz, we know her already for a longer time. On the way back, Bottlenose dolphins accompanied our boat for quite a while. They surfed and jumped joyfully in our bow wave.

Cicatriz (the one with the "Scar") Cicatriz diving 

Back in the Port, the noise from the fluke slapping on the water was still in my mind. These wonderful animals manage to impress and surprise us over and over again.

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