Family gathering with heavyweights

Text: Pia Ackermann and Andrea Stampfli; photos: Thomas Brückmann, Benjamin Dieckmann, Monika Wittwer and Eduardo Montano Peralta

Every year in February everyone gathers around her: old and new friends of the foundation firmm. Katharina Heyer calls and they come, some to see Katharina again and to lend a hand, showing their loyalty for a good cause by contributing to a pleasant evening. The others, because their last encounter with whales and dolphins in freedom is already a while back, stay in touch with her this way. And the last group wants to revive the memories of their last holiday in 2013 and to follow the events of firmm. Everybody has a common interest: the whales and dolphins in the Strait of Gibraltar.

   

    

The evening went on in the same old way, already the 16th firmm-meeting. There lies part of her secret to success. How else would it be possible to lure about 350 people to Aarau this year, with all that surplus of latent entertainment possibilities?

Katharina reported about the most important events of the last season in Tarifa and showed the latest pictures and movies of the encounter with the animals in their troubled habitat. Prof. Dr. Patricia Holm presented the Orcas this year and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Holm knew how to fascinate the audience with an interesting analysis of the firmm database despite the dryness of the subject.

   

Unchecked streams of tourists, parting from Curro and a once-in-a-century event

In spite of the cold, Katharina leads with superior ease through the evening. She tells about the work in Spain plagued by the crisis, about the big media coverage of the last season, that only 500 tourists less than the previous year went out to the sea with firmm, and she tells that Sea Shepherd plans a campaign in Tarifa in the second half of June 2014.

Altogether there were less animals observed in the season of 2013 with the comparable amount of journeys, particularly less pilot whales. Here are the exact numbers of all sightings of the season 2013:

  

Google makes it possible: Martin König has installed a virtual tour through all three firmm offices in Tarifa, which ends with the walk to the boat. One can feel immediately the sun on one´s skin, smell the sea and hear the commands, when the “Spirit” departs. That gives at least a small feeling of being part of the action.

    

The firmm-news already reported a lot about the two rescue operations of injured turtles. “Dolores” who was rescued by Eduardo with a big effort, survived. You could read a lot on the webpage about Curro and how he endured after his injury by a ship’s propeller in the year 2008. Unfortunately he disappeared for some time and it is assumed that his fight came to an end. A special spectacle was offered to our guests in April. We could observe three sperm whales during mating for more than an hour (more about that in Alicia Lipsky´s blog).

"15 years of counting the whales and collecting data – is that necessary?"

A statistician answers this question spontaneously with “yes!”, one would assume. However Jürgen Holm explains to the audience how a well founded database can bring answers to questions and theories, which are results from current developments. At the beginning is always a hypothesis. In the following example is it the assumption of firmm-biologist Jörn Selling, that the four new harbours Tanger Med influence the whereabouts of the resident pilot whales. But how?

   

   

From the extensive data that firmm collected during the last 15 years, Jürgen has chosen the relevant data, which gives evidence of the whereabouts of the pilot whales since 2007 (opening of the harbour “Tanger Med”, the largest of the four). It appears that the pilot whales stayed in principle in the area. However, there is a trend that groups with newborn calves have been moving more westerly than other groups. That might indicate that they prefer the stress of meeting orcas (mostly at the west-end of the strait) to exposing them to the danger of the increasing traffic close to the harbour. But the statement about the territory of the pilot whales has to be relativized. Apart from the fact that the sighting positions do not compellingly match with the distribution area, firmm has started with the search for sea mammals since 2011 more in the west (required by Tanger Traffic). The current might play a role as well, just as the temporal encounter with the orca-sightings. To summarize, Jürgen records the fact that the structured observations in the firmm database are a treasure that allow numerous formulation of problems and analysis over the time-axis, especially about the biology and behaviour. However it is too early to make an unambiguous statement about the influence of the new harbours on the pilot whales´ territory.

  

Orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar

At the beginning of the lecture about Orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar, Prof. Dr. Patricia Holm provides the audience with some general information about the Orcas. Their only enemy is the human being. Their status is regarded as “threatened” according to international classifications. There is a lot of research material available about their culture, for example about their hunting-behaviour or their communication. Orcas communicate within the group (5-70 animals) in different dialects. Disruptions have medium- and long-term a devastating effect, because Orcas spend most of the time searching for food. Only little can be said about the classification of different ecotypes. It is known that the individual populations do not mix among each other.

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Three groups are known in the Strait of Gibraltar, from which 32 animals can be identified clearly by their photo-identification. It is unknown where they spend the time during the year. But in summer they appear in the Atlantic in front of Tarifa to hunt the red tuna. There they often snatch the tuna from the fisherman’s hook. However, surveys show that the captured part is insignificant. To the affected Moroccan fishermen, every loss is serious. But if you become aware of the fact that 85% of the whole tuna catch in the Mediterranean ends up on Japanese plates, it is not necessary to do all those surveys.

    

During the break, the troupe of the „Gärtnerhaus“ served us warm Tortellini with a delicious mushroom sauce. The cold meat and cheese plates were prepared by the many volunteers under Caroline Burger’s direction.

    

   

After the break

After everyone enjoyed refreshing themselves to their heart's content with a delicious dinner or just with coffee and cake, Katharina continues after the break with showing her gratitude. She thanked all the people who supported firmm with great energy, in the background (foundation board / research / fiduciary services / website, etc.) or directly in the field (employee on-the-scene, boat crew, volunteers)).

    

Besides Katharina mentioned that the homepage was clicked on 296’890 times and it should especially be noticed that the Spanish took second place with 18.38%. The number of clicks has more than doubled. Katharina couldn’t explain this newly increased interest but takes note of it with delight. Most clicks on the homepage still come from Germany. The third most clicks on the homepage come from Switzerland with 15.58%.
Katharina emphasized proudly that the firmm boats are by far the cleanest and best maintained in the harbour.

   

Information about the morocco project

The evening continued with the latest information about the morocco project. Fundamental changes had been submitted. The sanctuary is newly planned in the same bay that also houses the old harbour. The old harbour has been remediated and upgraded. On the opposite side the new sanctuary will be created. Here some dikes already exist into the sea. Those dikes would offer first protection for the sanctuary animals and also for the boats.

The governor has suggested of his own accord to build another dike to protect the dolphins and the boats. The project will no longer be named Dolphin Sanctuary. The main reason is that Morocco won’t approve any dolphin imports, which means so to say: no bottlenose dolphins from foreign countries. The reason for this is the fear of epidemics. Katharina was obviously shocked hearing the news the first time. How shall the project be continued, if no dolphins can be saved from aquariums?

Nevertheless, Katharina decided once again to listen to in which directions the Moroccan ideas are going and to find out how definite the import ban really is.

First of all she explained the background of it all. Starting with ACCOBAMS, which is a multilateral environmental agreement that was signed in Monaco and came into force in June 2001. It is an agreement that was initiated by Monaco to protect the whales of the black sea, of the Mediterranean and the bordering Atlantic area. The 5thConference of all contracting partners took place in Tangier on 5.-8. November 2013. 70 participants from 18 different countries (government organizations, ACCOBAMS partner and other scientific organizations and institutions) were present. The conference appointed Morocco as member of the committee for the next three years. ACCOBAMS has a good and critical attitude towards animal imports. The new thing is that the head of INRH (department that is responsible for everything regarding water) is now also the secretary of ACCOBAMS, so there probably can’t be anything done about the dolphin import ban. However, apart from that, INRH has been very ambitious the past several years and has installed a lot of new laboratories with the aim of constantly analyse water samples and animal samples, to scrutinize the water quality and to prevent epidemics. The king personally came to the opening of the new INRH-seat in Tangier.

  

The manager responsible is now searching for a partner to set up a museum about the diversity of the oceans, their sea dwellers and the predominant dangers and threats. There wouldn’t be much contributed financially, but already a big fund of skeletons and display models exists. The museum project has first priority for the Moroccans. firmm could also set up a rescue centre for stranded animals there. Besides this the Moroccans wish that firmm would offer whale watching there on the exact same scale as in Tarifa. Apparently the responsible biologist observed firmm for a whole day on the sea and gained a personal impression hearing the introduction talks. She accentuates that she wants to offer whale watching in the same respectful way, with the corresponding information talks, and so for her only firmm is worthy of consideration. Katharina on the other hand doesn’t want to offer Whale Watching there and by doing so to pave the way for other disrespectful providers to build their own companies. The animals would only be more disturbed. However, the head of INRH only wants to license firmm to do Whale Watching. Katharina, Hanea and Rachid are now working out a cooperation agreement, to record all those conditions. This contract has highest priority in March. The new sanctuary will therefore be possible as follows:

- Museum

- Rescue-Centre for stranded animals

- Whale watching with information for the guests

 

Katharina assured all the donators that the money that was already donated still exists entirely and will be used for the Rescue-Centre.

Sperm whales mating

Katharina showed a short movie about a sperm whale mating, which she had filmed on one trip. The event took more than 1 hour. There were 3 sperm whales present and about 80 pilot whales, and 50 bottlenose dolphins didn’t miss this spectacle (exactly as the people on the boat). An encounter that really got under their skin and left unique impressions.

Miscellaneous

Then Katharina informed the audience about other events. Meret Kübler wrote her A-Level thesis at the Kantonsschule Winterthur and Carmen Dunst her final thesis, both about the whales and dolphins in the Strait of Gibraltar. More than 40 volunteers have given information about the boat rides and the whales and dolphins in the Strait of Gibraltar at 5 Swiss fairs. Doris and Kurt Farner will again take over the organization regarding the SUISSE Caravan Salon, which will take place in Bern from the 23. – 27. October 2014.

We are still looking for voluntary stand assistants. Please get in contact under farnerdo@gmail.com.

17 pilot whales, 5 bottlenose dolphins and 2 orcas can be adopted.

Furthermore Katharina thanks various persons, companies and the media, which have supported firmm with their work, performance, donations or publications.

At the end Katharina mentioned that the next firmm-meeting will take place on the 21st of February 2015.