Once in Tarifa - forever whale watching! After being a volunteer here two years ago, I was drawn again to the Strait of Gibraltar for three days. An experience I will never forget! During our last excursion (there were four altogether) there was nothing to watch for a long time - but then… Two blows - close together! Two sperm whales…who stayed in the same spot until we reached them with our boat! Keeping a respectful distance we watched their behaviour until they decided to dive underwater simultaneously. A ballet in the Strait of Gibraltar! Incredibly impressive!

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Those of you who have had the pleasure of vacationing in Tarifa have certainly met “Levante”. He is omnipresent and responsible for many things — when we can’t take the boats out to sea, or even when locals are a bit confused or distracted. But who is this “Levante”?
The Levante is a very strong wind which forms in the Mediterranean sea between Spain and the North African coast. It originates in the East and blows West, towards the Atlantic. It is surrounded by chains of mountains around the Strait of Gibraltar, the Atlas mountains on the African coast and the Sierra Nevada on the Spanish coast. The Levante usually blows from June until August. His counterpart, the Poniente, is a lighter but colder wind which originates from the West. It blows east from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.
And how can we grasp all this?
The Levante originates in the East, where the sun rises (to rise in Spanish is “levantar” thus “levante”), on the contrary the Poniente comes from the West, where the sun sets (sets in Spanish is “poner”).
If one morning you wake up from a fun night and you don’t remember how you got home, you can blame the “Levante” which makes everyone lose their mind and memory…

Soon after receiving the sad news about Curro’s injury, we made an interesting observation.
A few hours later, one of the biggest Pilot Whales observed in the Strait of Gibraltar approached the boat with his family - 2 juveniles and 2 females. The juveniles amused themselves at the bow, while the male swam under the boat — almost as if scratching his body under the ship. He turned around from one side to the other, came back several times very close to the side of the boat, so close that we could have touched him. While he rolled, he dashed with the fluke on the water, which caused an enormous splashing. It was a strange kind of spectacle - to see this very bulky and powerful animal, 8m long, next to our 10 m boat was quite impressive. Even our captain Sebastian and the mariñero Diego came out of their coach to see the giant Pilot Whale. These experienced sea men don’t witness something like this every day, although they spend so much time at the sea with the whales.
Everyone was impressed by this “touching” encounter. I couldn’t stop wondering if both incidents were somehow correlated and if so - what was this pilot whale trying to tell us?

On May 23rd we made a sad discovery. We sighted a large male Pilot Whale that had an incision across his ridge in front of the dorsal fin. The incision was 15cm deep and probably stopped just before the spine, the fringes (skin and adipose tissue) were still bloody red. The muscular tissue was covered by collagen fibres which show the first phase of the healing process. From the top of the ship I could see deep inside the wound where it was also bloody. The accident probably occurred between the 18th and the 21st of May. At this point it is questionable whether the animal will survive. I hope it will, so it could become a symbol for the whale watchers.

I point out the whale watchers because in my opinion they could be the ones to blame. The incision could have originated from a propeller and because of the size of the wound, presumably from a bigger ship. It is safe to assume the animal was probably resting under a ship with a stationary propeller and got injured when it was suddenly turned on.

The fishermen that cross the groups of whales when they are hunting for tuna are not likely suspects because they usually do not fish these waters until June. Furthermore they don’t stop, but tug the fishing lines with the hooks dragging behind. During the month of May there are only whale watchers and the usual cargo ships and ferries - no fishermen. It’s also the whale watchers who most frequently have their propellers turned off next to the whales. So they can’t be excluded. Moreover I have seen numerous whale watchers suddenly take off when they sighted a Sperm whale, without checking whether there were animals under the propeller. This happens most often with the big boats, where you can’t see the animals under the boat from the bridge.
We spotted “Curro” (that’s how we called him) again on the 24th of May and have never seen him again…

I have never seen a marine mammal with such a strange “ulcer”. First it made me think of “pocks” like we know them from the humpback whales and the grey whales. However, from the photos we understand that it is something more or less soft, like a tumor. I have sent the photos to Kimberly Grobholz who is the owner of a practice in Munich for natural therapy of animals. She assumes that this phenomenon is due to extreme environment pollution. She knows this problem from the marine fauna in general.

We left the port and turned towards Tanger. However, just before we reached the position where we normally meet the pilot whales and the bottlenose dolphins, I saw the blow of a sperm whale from the corner of my eye. He was about one mile from our boat and dove after a short time. I thought that it was a shame that we didn’t notice him earlier which would have enabled us to watch him for a longer time, as we hadn’t seen a sperm whale for about a week. We continued driving and suddenly saw 3 pilot whales. Far and wide there was nothing else to see, but this turned out to be good. In addition, 9 sperm whales appeared. It looked like water-jets had been turned on close by. So we had to go from one to the other, depending on the distance, sometimes even having to hurry. Therefore we were glad that there were no other animals around. It is always a pity when we have to leave a group of bottlenose dolphins that are playing right in front of the boat. Sometimes it is not even possible to leave because the animals swim too close around the boat - unless one has no scruples and zooms away recklessly. Among the sperm whales there was also a juvenile. I don’t think that there were 10 different animals. It rather looked like some of them appeared several times. I think there were about 5 to 8 animals. Last year on our June 19th boat trip we had very similar sightings with 8 sperm whales in total. So this is a new record!

During our next trip we only saw one sperm whale, and since then no group like that again!

If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it.
When I was walking to the castle today between 10.00 and 10.30 a.m. I had my field-glasses with me (unfortunately I´d forgotten my camera) to check the waves after the strong Levante, because the next trip after 4 days of wind would be taking place at 12:00. When I reached the lookout point I heard a loud detonation that totally frightened me. An old woman next to me cried out loud “”los moros”, the Moroccans are shooting!”
I couldn’t believe that, because the noise came from the cliff-lined coast on the Spanish side. And after that there was another explosion. This time I could see from which direction the projectiles were coming, and at the same time I saw 3 huge impacts outside in the Strait of Gibraltar with water-jets of an enormous altitude quite well with my field-glasses. In the front - not far away from the line of fire - there was a fishing boat going towards Tarifa harbor. Except for the one boat there were no others outside. A short time later I heard a 3rd and 4th deafening bang. I could see more and more impacts, and finally there were 5 huge water-jets, all of them in direction of the new Moroccan harbor “Tanger MED”, which is located in the middle of the Strait of Gibraltar. There the width of the Strait is just 14km and near the impacts we recently saw 3 Sperm Whales, as well as the schools of Pilot Whales with all their calves that we observed just 2-3 km away from the impacts. A concentration of the marine mammals that live here is located in an area of 3-4 km around the impacts. I got sick while thinking of the animals and how they probably got scared to death when, even on land, it was such a deafening noise. Furthermore, the coastal area has been declared now for a while as a nature reserve, about which we were very pleased.
How is it possible that the military can operate the manoeuvres here of all places, although everybody knows that it’s the habitat of many cetaceans?!
It’s just unbelievable how recklessly the military can act!!!

Photo: Aurelio Morales

Photo: Photomontage

On the day between two days of the usual winds, the Poniente (westerly) and Levante (east wind), we had fantastic weather with ideal conditions to go out for a trip.
And we really had wonderful sightings: It started with a family of Pilot Whales, which came up to the boat and entertained us with their games.

It seemed as if they liked to show us what Bottlenose Dolphins usually do -having fun- and amusing our guests on the Boat. They peeked out of the water and tried to splash the people, and stayed under the boat for a long time. They were very friendly; the mothers also approached and tried to teach their calves how to do proper spyhopping… It was fascinating to see their behaviour from such a short distance.

The Pilot Whales had our attention until a Sperm Whale appeared just 100 m away from the boat. He put his head unusually high out of the water with every blow, and I discovered a part of his body that looked like a big belly - it was a lateral bulge …

After that a second Sperm Whale breached just 500 m away from the other which suddenly disappeared. It was Quasimodo - a big and strong representative of his species, which we recognized by means of a kind of collar on his body.

The Bottlenose Dolphins joined us a short time after the Sperm Whales. Among the group we discovered Lolly with her calf close to her and her partner. They were swimming a long time in front of the boat and then followed us right next to the boat for a while. The water was crystal clear, so we could observe them under water as well.

It is always a pleasure to encounter the family of Pilot Whales with ZackZack, who is also always accompanied by her newborn calf. We saw ZackZack the first time in summer 2006, during the whole summer in 2007 and since April 2008 the first time with a calf.
The calf, which is very small, is always swimming very close to ZackZack and we could still see the stripes on his body that are caused by the contractions of the uterus during birth.
ZackZack got her name from Jörn at the same period when we saw a Pilot Whale named ZickZack in the Strait of Gibraltar who looked very similar.

We unfortunately couldn’t find ZickZack since the end of 2006, after we discovered her continuously during 2006.

The same family of Pilot Whales was also accompanied by a group of Bottlenose Dolphins which entertained us with very high jumps.

After these great sightings everybody left the boat satisfied. When the participants entered the boat, all the different families and groups were on their own and didn’t even speak the same language. But when they left it felt like a big and happy family!
The adventures with the whales and dolphins they had shared together seemed to unite them. This always fills me with joy and makes me grateful.