May 3rd - The first highlight of the trip is of the feathered variety!  I am just walking onto the bridge when a flash of white outside the window alerts me to a visitor.  A (very lost) cattle egret has settled on the bridge railings and is balancing there very precariously as the ship rolls in the swell, it's long toes wrapped around the rail.  Unfortunately the bridge is a busy place, and the bird is nervous and quickly disturbed from its resting place.  We last see it flying off to the south, a strange sight in the middle of the ocean.

May 3rd - A couple of very large splashes up ahead of us are the cue I have been waiting for.  Through the binoculars I see the small black shapes of leaping dolphins emerging several metres above the sea and crashing back down again onto their sides.  As the animals draw slightly closer I see one do a full somersault midair and many other acrobatic individuals are performing leaps and turns with incredible agility.  The dolphins are not interested in our vessel, and keep a good distance away from the ship. I suspect them to be striped dolphins from this typical energetic behaviour, but they do not approach closely enough for positive identification.

May 7th - There is a strange tapping sound on the bridge window and we look up to see we have a visitor!  A woodland kingfisher is perched on the window ledge looking in at us.  The bird looks fit and well, its turquoise plumage brightening up the ship considerably.  But it is a long way from its usual onshore habitat of mangroves and woodlands, and we wish it luck finding it's way home as it flies away.

May 7th - Low bushy blows ahead of the ship reveal the presence of two sperm whales.  One animal flukes a few minutes after I detect them, but its companion remains at the surface for longer and passes between the seismic vessel and the chase boat.  This is the closest sperm whale encounter I have had so far this trip, with the adult whale logging at the surface within a kilometre of the vessel.  Shortly after passing our beam the whale produces a bigger blow and rolls slightly at the surface indicating that it is preparing for a dive.  After its next and final blow, it arches its back and tail stock and dives, lifting it's tail flukes high into the air.

May 9th - I have been in the bridge filling in the form for a sperm whale sighting, and almost miss the smaller fins passing 1.5 km ahead of the ship.  There are about 11 animals in total and although small they do not behave like typical dolphins.  In fact I quickly note the rounded heads and tall, prominent dorsal fins which are suggestive of Risso's dolphins.  Silhouetted against the sun the dolphins appear jet-black in colour and are rather robust in appearance, travelling purposefully to the south-west in a tight group.  Although they are distant I take some images which are later used to confirm the identification.

May 11th - Suddenly standing out markedly against the bright blue sea, is the tall slender white blow from a baleen whale.  The whale blows again, and has moved quite a distance under the water since it's previous surfacing.  The blow is clearly from a rorqual whale, and does not appear bushy enough to belong to a humpback which I am expecting to arrive back from Antarctica any day now.  I suspect this is a Bryde's whale, the most common of the other possible species and the only type of baleen whale that remains in Angolan waters during the summer months.  The whale emits a sequence of 12 blows, before it sounds on a deeper dive revealing its tailstock and falcate dorsal fin.  I observer four more surfacing sequences, and manage to capture some photos of the whale before it disappears from sight.  The photos show round scars on it's lower flanks, typical of cookie-cutter shark bites.

May 13th - Another cattle egret today.  This one flies several times around the ship before finally landing on one of the spotlights on the helideck where it remains resting for several hours.

May 14th - For a brief second I spot dark blobs amongst the swell in the ocean ahead of the ship.  I start to imagine I am seeing things, as it is several minutes before I relocate what turns out to be pilot whales.  The small group contains eight animals including two large bulls, and it is probably the fins of the latter two animals that caught my eye initially.  The whales travel purposefully across our bow a long way ahead of us, and disappear off to the south.