I thought we weren't going to see much else in the way of good Cetaceans, after enjoying a stunning performance by Sperm Whales during the afternoon of the day we crossed the Equator. However, we had one more Cetacean treat when a dispersed party of Blackfish were seen on the port side in the late afternoon. None were close & they were not appearing very often. Checking the photos later & discussing with other observers, I completely failed to get onto the nearer pods of around twenty False Killer Whales which were a few hundred metres off the Plancius. But I did get onto around twenty of the fifty or so more distant Melon-headed Whales. I've seen Melon-headed Whales before in the Philippines on the ferry between Batangas, Luzon & Waya, Mindoro & on the return ferry a few days later. But that was back in 2002 and I can't remember much about those sightings: especially as my only camera had died a few weeks before. So, I was pleased to get another sighting of some Melon-headed Whales, even if they weren't close.
Melon-headed Whale: Melon-headed Whales are a Dolphin-sized Blackfish with a maximum size of 2.8 metres. They have a distinctive head shape without a beak and without the melon overhanging the jaws as it does in the much larger False Killer Whales (which are 5 - 6 metres in size)
Melon-headed Whale: The dorsal fin is positioned about halfway along the body & is tall & slightly falcate
Melon-headed Whale: This close crop of the last photo shows a darker mask to the lower head which is one of the features to separate them from the more uniformly coloured & similar-sized Pygmy Killer Whales
Melon-headed Whale: Melon-headed Whales occur in all tropical & subtropical deep water oceans from 40 degrees North to 35 degrees South
Melon-headed Whale
Four-winged Flying Fish
Four-winged Flying Fish: Another view of the same individual
Bandwing Flying Fish: I caught this individual as it was about to dive back into the water
We also saw the four Flying Fish species that we had been seeing on the previous few days: Small Clearwing, Four-winged Flying Fish, Atlantic Flying Fish and Bandwing Flying Fish.
