One of the great wonders of the world is great seas and oceans. In fact as a scuba diver I’ve had the privileged to enter a liquid universe that’s absolutely teeming with life.
For me the oceans are like a liquid soup of organisms. Without the oceans life wouldn’t exist and we wouldn’t have an atmosphere to allow to us live and breath, there wouldn’t be a water cycle and we and are fellow species would go very thirsty.
Take a fresh vegetable such as a carrot and leave it on your window ledge and see what happens to it and within a few days, it disappears into a slimy mess. Without fresh water we’d be much the same, we’d all shrivel up and die
At night when I’m sailing I love watching the green phosphoresce trails sparkling on the surface due to your boats wash. These are the dinoflagellates that come up to the surface at night to feed. Shine a touch down into the sea and you’ll be truly amazed at what you see. Teeming soup of life.
What I also find amazing is the spectacular wildlife scenes you come across unexpectedly when sailing. If I see pelagic birds in the distance, such as the Shearwaters in a flock and circling over the water and in a frenzy, you know they’re found a large shoal of fish. You’ll find other species such dolphins and maybe tuna or even dorado. Sailfish and occasionally the toothed whales Odontoceti. The tooth whales such dolphins who are a class of Cetacean and their larger cousins the Sperm and the Orca.
Off the Madeira and the Azores you see mainly Sperm and pilot whales. But other non tooth Baleen whales can be seen such as the Humpback, Fin, Sei. But there’s nothing more magnificent than a humpback breaching out of the water after a deep dive.
Each summer I now plan to sail out to the Azores to visit the islands and go in search of our mammal cousins the whales.
A few years ago I did a special trip down the Pacific along Baja peninsular and in to the Sea of Cortez. during that trip I must of seen every species of Whale; the Sperm, Humpback, Grey whales with their calf’s, Pilot and the truly awesome and magnificent Blue whale. Strange how we humans act when we see whales fluking at the start of a dive we suddenly all become children again with whoops, screams and gasps .
However all that said I love to sit in the cockpit and watch the Cory Shearwaters glide over the surface of the waves their wing tips barely touching the surface and getting lift off the back of each wave with such graceful flight and at one with his watery environment many thousands of miles away from land. The little black storm petrel dancing over the surface of the water. And be in true awe of how such small birds can survive in such vastness as the oceans. The occasions when you see a green turtle appear popping it’s head up to say hello and see who or what you are!
My Nicholson has very low free board and I can virtually touch dolphins as they pass Barada by or when the Atlantic spotted dolphins race around your bow pressure wave. I can stand on the foredeck whopping and howling for all my life. If you stand there long enough the clever Dolphins swim on their sides giving you total eye contact. That’s when I feel at one with my ocean friends.
https://youtu.be/rR5lITLc3_Ehttps://youtu.be/Je1B3Xt5-lM