• Day 1 – Meet & Greet at Horta or Pico airports.

Transfer to Lajes do Pico, the heart of Azorean whale watching, and the hotel “Whale’come ao Pico”, our base.

• Day 2/7 – Lajes do Pico
  • Departure from Lajes do Pico harbour at approximately 10am, for your encounter with the animals. Once in the company of dolphins, you’ll enjoy listening, observing and edging even closer for improved camera work.
  • Return to Lajes at around 1pm. Afternoons are free, to do you as wish.
  • In the Whaling Museum, you’ll find a fantastic collection of scrimshaw (engravings on sperm whale’s teeth) as well as one of the most complete libraries in the world on the art of whale hunting.
  • The “Vigia da Queimada” is well worth a visit.
  • The BOCA, our Base of Observation of the Cetaceans of the Azores, can provide you with documentation (books, audiovisual materials, Internet access).
  • The BOCA, also has mountain bikes and a sea-going kayak which you can take to “Maré” and “Castelete”.
  • “Calheta de Nesquim”, the Azorean port from where the first whaling boat went out, will appeal to the more energetic visitors. The little harbour was also one of the most active centres during the years of prosperity (1950’s).
  • A “bit” further down the road, you can visit the old whaling factory of São Roque.
  • Otherwise, after having spent the morning at sea, let yourself be carried away by the sweetness of the Azorean summer and enjoy an afternoon of “dolce farniente” in the coolness of your hotel or at the edge of the ocean, which is never far away. It is possible to join our guided tour, click here for more info.

• Day 8 – Lajes do Pico/Airport (timings will correspond with your international flight).

This summary gives an indication of what to expect during your stay. Your guide may modify your trip slightly in function to the weather conditions, safety, the number of participants and of course the presence of whales.

By choosing Espaço Talassa, you choose to limit your ecological footprint.

• Espaço Talassa plants trees and contributes to a “micro-reserve” project as compensation for the ecological deficit and the CO2 emissions related to our whale watching activity, in collaboration with association “Quercus”.
• For each customer €0,50 cents will be donated towards the “Cabeço Santo” (GPS position: 40º31’52″N 8º20’36″W- Google Maps) reforestation project in the mountain range of Caramulo, victim of a terrible forest fire in 2005. Soon the indigenous vegetation will substitute eucalyptus, acacias and other infesters.

It’s true: “the sea is blue because forests are green”!

Where are the Azores?

• This is where Europe ends: 38 degrees North and 30 degrees West, some 800 nautical miles from the nearest coast, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Azoreans, isolated for centuries, have survived on their resources of agriculture, fishing and…. whale hunting. Melville drew inspiration from such odysseys to write his epic tale, “Moby Dick”.
• For the last 30 years, it has been strictly prohibited to harm cetaceans in the Azores.
• The sperm whale prefers the south coast of Pico. Here, assisted by Marcel, the Queimada’s lookout, you can observe the whales and get close to them. The ambition of the project goes even further as it includes an introduction into other traces and vestiges of the whaling culture and tradition, of which the people of Lajes are the last witnesses.
• Last but not least these wildlife observation holidays, which respect both the animals and the local culture, are the natural way for Azoreans to continue to remain involved with whales long after the end of whale hunting in 1984. Whale watching offers an alternative way with whales for the Lajes community, and at the same time is an ideal way to protect the giants of the sea.
• To have a Wiki-idea about the Azores, please click here

Thanks to our look-out techniques from land, we don’t leave the harbour blindly. Each morning before embarking, a briefing is held during which we take into consideration the observations made by the lookout. The type of cetacean spotted, their groups, their distance from the harbour, the sea conditions, the number of animals in the group, and the absence or presence of smaller whales are all necessary factors in assessing the quality of forthcoming excursions.

See statistics since 1997

28 cetacean species frequent the Azores sea

In the interface of the North Atlantic, between “hot water” and “cold water”, the archipelago is without any doubt one of the best places for cetacean observation in the northern hemisphere. Also, because the islands are far away from the main merchant navy routes, recreational sailing has not yet made the carnage known in Continental Europe, and the large pollution emitters are relatively far off.

List of Cetacean of the Azores