The season 2012 – a brief retrospective

22.12.2012 16:39 by Jörn Selling

Text: Jörn Selling, photos: firmm

This season was pretty mild thanks to the lack of too many days of strong levante-wind, which force us to go to the Bay of Gibraltar. The most interesting trips at that Bay happen towards the end of the summer seasons (during the months of September and October) when large shoals of flying fish gather in front of the rock of Gibraltar. These shoals can also be observed on the other side of the Strait, in front of the Yebel Musa (Moses mountain) and sometimes in the centre.

We also spotted some bottlenose dolphins in the Bay, in addition to the lonely female that was adopted as a calf by the resident common dolphins. She is still living with them, despite having grown to sexual maturity.

Several photographers worked aboard our ships:

Robert Felgentreu from Berlin (www.bildgetreu.de)
Steven Weinberg from Luxemburg (www.weinberg.lu/blog3.php)

Common dolphins

The many, sometimes large pods of common dolphins in and in front of the Bay made us enjoy very much.

Striped dolphins

They are more present in the second half of the summer season of the Strait. The 6^th of October was remarkable, when we observed them playing beside common dolphins with pilot whales. Something similar happened the 30^th of October of the last year, when we saw them interacting with pilot whales. It seems they get more playful when gathering in larger pods in autumn.

Bottlenose dolphins

Towards the end of this summer season they showed up in smaller pods, then they generally they are less curious. Nevertheless they find moments to get into show mood, like the 12^th of October.

Pilot whales

Curro is still fighting. (Curro - Problem child of the Strait of Gibraltar). His friend Edu was provided with a radio transmitter, as well as other pilot whales like Gonzo. Now Gonzo is suffering under an infection with necrotic tissue at the base of his dorsal fin. We whish him loads of luck and hope to find him well recovered after this winter.

There have been also lots of days with happy, joyful and curious pilot whales.

We hope to find many young pilot whales next year, after having witnessed quite a few mating scenes this season.

Orcas

This Orca season started and ended early than the last one. We could observe them from the 6^th of July until the 30^th of September, with the obligatory interruptions due to the strong levante-wind. In the beginning we saw the complete pod of 23 animals together.

Among them we observed three calves and four males, Camacho, Morales and two young ones, whose dorsal fins started to grow because of having attained sexual maturity.

This season they showed some curiosity for the first time since we observe them. In particular the calves sometimes approached our ship and twice an adult female kept on swimming under our propellers for quite a long time.

The 21th of July we observed for the second time only since 1999 a male named Bartolo, whose dorsal fin has fallen to the left because of a deep cut through the leading edge.

The 4^th of August we were surprisingly caught by dense fog on our way to the Orcas, nevertheless we were able to find them in that ghostish scenery.

Sperm whales

During June and July we had five sperm whales in the Strait of Gibraltar. The rest of this season only very few sightings of them happened. Despite being better than previous ones, this season did not reach the one of 2008, when up to eleven sperm whales could be observed at the same time. Together with the noise caused by the huge deep sea port “Tanger Med”, variations in the availability of large squid seem to be the cause for yearly fluctuations of the presence of sperm whales in the Strait of Gibraltar.

At least two of the five we observed this season were young whales who liked to jump, something rarely observed between these large animals and difficult to capture on film because of being so unexpected. Sometimes bottlenose dolphins and pilot whales approached the sperm whales to play or mill around.