The first tour of the season

Text: Edeltraud Konradt; Fotos: firmm

It is March 18th 2016, a sunny day with temperatures about 18° Celsius. firmm opens the season today. Here, as always, a slight wind blows, there are already many tourists in town and they have found their way to us.Perfect conditions to begin with. While I am doing the information, I already have butterflies in my stomach...This is the anticipation of seeing the animals again, will we see some of them? For firmm is two weeks earlier on the start as in former years.

On board we have also a group of ornithologists. It is very interesting for me to observe, how the run back and forth on the boat, totally excited, always the cameras in front of their eyes, to ban everything that moves above the water and in the sky on camera. Because this time of the year many bird species fly back from Africa to Europe, literally above our heads.  I acknowledge: it is their passion. I am confessing, for me it is not that important; I am looking on the surface of the water and from my place on the boat I keep an eye out for fins, with my neck stretched out: this is my passion.

Then suddenly they are here - dolphins – Bottlenose Dolphins - also our acquaintance Lolly is amongst them – they jump and come very close to the boat.

  

They stand vertically in the water and wave with their tale fluke, as if they were greeting us.

    

Everybody is feeling the joy – also the ornithologists take pictures of the dolphins. A school of Pilot Whales joins them, as usually they are lying on the water surface – exuding an incredible sense of calm.We hear them breath.

  

We are able to greet well known animals: here are Pedro, Edu and also the female Baby Hook. They came with their families. Katharina greeted them by microphone. Hello, yes we are here again…and her words drew them actually closer to us, they know this voice already for years and apparently they like it. The joy of reunion was big on both sides, we don’t stop looking and the cameras don’t stop clicking, each one wants to capture that magic moment. Unfortunately time flies way too fast when we are with the animals and we have to return to Tarifa.

The ornithologists once again turn their attention to the sky to find new motifs for their cameras.

What a successful first tour.