Sea Life!

Throughout the past year we have encountered a huge variety of wildlife. Below will be a small selection of photos and videos showing you some of the more common and uncommon sea life we have seen.

Jellyfish

Although the Caribbean had very few jellyfish, the Mediterranean is covered in them. The most common one that we have seen in the Med is the purple jellyfish, or Pelagia noctiluca.

At night when we are sailing, they glow a bright white when caught in the turbulence of our wake. Although their arms don't grow very long, they have stingers all over their body.

I can say from experience that these jellyfish stings hurt!

Portuguese man-o-war are not technically jellyfish, but are instead labeled as hydrozoans. Crossing the Atlantic from West to East, we saw hundreds of them floating by us each day, since they can be seen above the surface of the water. They are filled with carbon monoxide and air, and this allows them to drift with the wind (like a sail). Their stings are deadly and we made sure to avoid them when we swam in the Atlantic.

Dolphins

Dolphins are definitely one of our favorite sea animals. Oftentimes a pod of them will swim at the bow of our boat - sometimes for over 30 min! They can easily keep up with the speed of our boat and dart in-between the hulls.

Whales!!!

On our passage across Golfe Du Lion, sailing from Barcelona, Spain towards Marseille, France, we spotted 8 separate pods of humpback whales. Megan and Christine sat posted on opposite sides of the boat, excitedly looking for the telltale sign of water spouts and pointing to breaching whales. The video above shows one of the whales that came relatively close to our boat.