The islands that went from whale hunting to whale watching

From dramatic humpback breaches to enthralling dolphin acrobatics, a springtime visit to the Azores is synonymous with incredible sightings of whales and dolphins.

The remote Portuguese archipelago, consisting of nine volcanic islands about 900 miles west of Lisbon, lies in the North Atlantic Ocean, putting it on the migration route of several whale species. And from March to June - whale migration season - lucky tourists may even catch a glimpse of behemoths like the blue whale and the fin whale, the two largest animals on the planet.

As well as migrating whales, the Azores also have resident cetaceans, including sperm whales and some dolphin species, which can be seen year-round. With nearly a third of the 94 known cetacean species in the world observed here, the archipelago consistently ranks as one of the best places on the planet to go whale watching.

But the centuries-old relationship between Azoreans and whales has not always been so harmonious,as Rui de Souza Martins, emeritus professor of Anthropology at the University of the Azores, explains.

"The archipelago was populated by settlers from mainland Portugal from the 15th century onwards," he says. "These early inhabitants, mostly farmers, limited themselves to harvesting the dead whales they found at sea or on the coast. The whale blubber was boiled down to make oil for lamps."

By the 18th century, the Azores' resident population of sperm whales was drawing attention from the United States. Whaling ships from Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts, would make the roughly 2,300-mile voyage east to go hunting. In the age before the discovery of crude oil, the use of spermaceti (the waxy substance obtained from the head of a sperm whale) and whale oil (from blubber) for lighting and other purposes, made whaling a lucrative industry.

These factory-style ships would lower small wooden boats into the ocean for the hunt, then haul the dead animal onboard the larger ship for processing.