Common Bottlenose Dolphins in the Atlantic Ocean around Madeira

17 september 2013.
What do you do when you are on an island like Madeira (Portugal), about 600 km off the coast of Morocco? Then you go for a Whale, dolphin and bird watching excursion by boat with Madeira Wind Birds. Riding the waves, circled by lots of Cory's Shearwaters. Only to encounter a nice group of Common Bottlenose Dolphins (NL: Tuimelaar) (Tursiops truncatus). And several Short-finned Pilot Whales.

Common Bottlenose Dolphin - Madeira, Portugal

Above is just one photo, but there is a bunch of photos on the website: Common Bottlenose Dolphins. And believe me, it's quite hard to shoot any focused photo when the boat is rocking on over 1m high waves and you try to find a surfacing dolphin in your camera viewfinder through a 500mm zoom lens. So I was lucky to get some good photos. The hardest part is predicting where a dolphin will surface and then quickly reacting to that. But I managed in some cases, hence the pictures!


For those who like the biological details:
Click a link and you'll go to the page for that rank in the biological classification on Schaapmans' Wildlife Spotting.

Kingdom:	Animalia
	Animals	Dierenrijk
Phylum:	Chordata
	Vertebrates	Gewervelden
Class:	Mammalia
	Mammals	Zoogdieren
Order:	Cetacea
	Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises	Walvisachtigen
Suborder:	Odontoceti
	Toothed Whales	Tandwalvissen
Superfamily:	Delphinoidea
	Toothed Whales	Tandwalvissen
Family:	Delphinidae
	Oceanic Dolphins	Dolfijnen
Genus:	Tursiops
	Bottlenose Dolphins	Tuimelaars
Species:	Tursiops truncatus
	Common Bottlenose Dolphin or Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin	Tuimelaar

New website Schaapmans' Wildlife Spotting live!

Yes, finally: www.wildlifespotting.com is online! It's all created from scratch. From the code to the drawings and all graphics. The site is fully responsive and fluid. That means that you can watch it on your big screen computer, on your laptop, on your iPad and on your mobile phone without any problems. And on your mobile phone the data traffic will be minimized as well.


 It's the first version and the home page will be extended of course. For instance with videos. And new sections will be added to the website. However, for now, there is a huge, huge section with all the taxonomical information. That's the evolutionary tree, the biological classification. You can see all photos grouped together per class, order, family and species. Want to know more or don't quite get it? Just have a look at Taxonomy (Biological Classification).

And if you think, hey, you talk about endangered animals and threatened species as well? That's correct. You can also view all my photos grouped according to their Conservation Status and level of how threatened their existence is. Just check my overview of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The next thing to do, is to add photos. I have thousands of yet unpublished wildlife photos - and partially unlabelled so organizing to do. Also, I'll have to do a complete overhaul of the lay-out and graphics of the blog to make it blend in with the website.

Enjoy and feedback is welcome of course!