The little common dolphin that had stranded in Marbella and has been taken care of in the C.R.E.M.A. nursing pool, can be released! The Junta de Andalucia has agreed to the release suprisingly quickly. Now the minders are trying to get the dolphin used to bigger bits of fish. He is not only fed small bits of fish anymore, but whole fish. It can take some time, however, until the dolphin will eat living fish. No definite date for the release has been given at the moment, but the ground has been prepared. Let’s hope that everything will work smoothly and that the young dolphin will be accepted by a group of common dolphins.

-casi-

If everything is working out well, the small pool will soon be history and the little dolphin can again swim freely in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. (Foto: K.Heyer)

This little, only two-weeks old baby pilot whale has escaped its mother to catch an eye of the curious tourists. Our boat with lots of amazed people is something new and a nice change for the young dolphins and pilot whales.

-KH-

(photo: K.Heyer)

Our webmasters Heike and Mario are here at the moment. Here is a short report of what they have seen:

We have just been in Tarifa for a couple of days and already experienced a number of wonderful excursions. We have seen pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins really close - they came directly to the boat and were as interested in us as we were in them.

Loly and her companion

On our tour today we had a very special encounter. When we were approaching a group of bottlenose dolphins, Katharina suddenly cried out, “There is Loly and she has a baby.” So far, we had only known this dolphin with the fungus on her fin from the weblog and now we could meet her ‘in person’. She was passing our boat quite closely so that we could even catch sight of her baby. It was nice to see that the young one has not yet been infected with the fungus.

The baby directly in front of Loly

For us, it was of course very exciting to see the dolphin, of which we had already seen some pics on the internet, with our own eyes.

- Heike and Mario -

On the 10th of September we got quite an unexpected inquiry:
A small, one month-old male baby dolphin had stranded in Marbella and is now being cared for by C.R.E.M.A.(governmental Spanish organization, responsible for stranded marine mammals). At the beginning he was fed with milk that was infused with a probe every two hours, but meanwhile he already eats little pieces of fish. Now it is feared that during the last two months he has been getting too used to humans because he voluntarily has been leaning against the arm of the person feeding him. Therefore the caring biologists and volunteers were thinking of giving the dolphin into the care of our Dolphin Resort.

Left and right: the little common dolphin in the nursing pool of C.R.E.M.A. (pictures: K. Heyer)

Together with Dr. Vladas Martirosas, a specialist from Vancouver who has been researching dolphins in liberty and captivity, we drove to Malaga in the evening on the 11th of September to see the small dolphin. Susanne Stamm, a helper from Switzerland, accompanied us to the C.R.E.M.A. installation. The 3-months old dolphin had grown very fast and despite the traffic noise and dust he seemed to be quite healthy and active. He was swimming around attentively observing what was happening out of the pool. Dr. Martirosas, the biologist Jesus and the volunteers were discussing the chances of returning the dolphin to the sea and Dr. Martirosas recommended a daily water renewal and some noise protection for the pool. When dolphins strand, only few survive; especially young ones die within the first 2-3 days. Together we planned how we might integrate the little one into a family of common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) as soon as possible. Now we are excited on how the “Junta de Andalusia”, who has the final word, will react and particularly how long we will have to wait for their decision. Dr. Martirosas, Susanne and her husband would accompany the released dolphin for several days if necessary.

from left to right: Dr. Vladas Martirosas, Susanne Stamm, Jesus (biologist of C.R.E.M.A.) (picture: K. Heyer)

-KH-