"Azores again" - OR - "No Mako... again"

I'd like to share some highlight from my recent trip to the Azores.
This year I did not have much luck with my health and the weather.
Paranasal and frontal sinuses been blocked and I had no chance to
enjoy the pre booked boot trips as I would have loved to.
And additionally the weather was not the best for that that time 
of the year. 

We did two trips for seeing the Mobula's and two for the Blue shark's / Mako's 

1. Mobula = 3 Mobulas
2. Mobula = 41 Mobula's and a small Whale shark

1. Blue shark = 2 Blue, one around the boat for over 3h!
2. Blue shark = stayed nearly 8h on the boat and not even one. 

This year is by fare the worst year the local operators saying.
3 Mobulas on one trip is one of the lowest rates they ever had
for a very long time and the dropping number of sharks...

For sure we all know why the number of sharks is decreasing.
If not, there are plenty of papers and articles to find online.
Just one which is related to the Azores and which will help to find the right
busswords to dig deeper into this wil be this one.
http://www.sharkproject.org/
But after hearing different opinions from local fisherman, I guess
it could be a mixture of some more factors, all coming together 

1. El Niño / North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)

• We know 2015 could be one or the worst El Niño's as recorded till now. And we also know that El Nino can effect NAO.

• Water temperature is warmer around the Azores as normal the locals say.

• Fisherman say sad this year is a low for Tuna fishing. Especially The Number of Bluefin Tuna catches around the Islands was very low this year. 

2. Shark Fishing 

• We know the portuguese fisherman are catching more sharks then ever.

3. Birth cycle of Blue sharks? 

• I heard a couple of story from spearfisher's that they encountered many baby/juvenile Blue Sharks around the Islands this year 

At least all of this points make sence and are very interesting from a
science perspective. I would love to get some insight into some science data
about this points and hopefully someone is releasing some papers about this soon. 

But now enjoy

(Thanks to Rike for the first Picture)

Mobula rays

Yesterday...

We both were still happy about our Sperm whale pictures and didn't expect something like this one day after ;)

Mobulas all over the place, but only for the snorkeler and freedivers, because the scubas were hanging on a rope between 5-15 meters and just saw what was approaching close to them.

Freedivers 1 - Scubas 0! hrhrhr

We saw them over 20 times and collected over 1 hour of video material (I hate cutting). I think they just saw them 5+ times ;) Also they didn't saw thousands of Yellowmouth Barracudas and Atlantic Bonitos.

Today you felt getting payed back for all the hard training's, unbelievable experience. A big thank you also goes to Greg for some nice pictures he did. He had also one of his lifetime freedives, when he went down, looking around and in the meantime 9 Mobula approached over his head when he started to ascend again, lucky guy ;)

No vacation without work
Anchor-rope got entangled in the ship's screw.

At the moment we both think that it it not possible to even top this day, BUT we still have one bonus tomorrow ;). And for me, if it will work out as i hope it will, it would be worth more than the rest of this trip.