Employees of firmm
The firmm-team in Tarifa
Dr. h. c. Katharina Heyer
Katharina, the founder and president of firmm, directs the foundation's fortunes from the very beginning. What she likes most is to sail out herself to show our guests the fascinating marine mammals. Read more about Katharina Heyer.
Nina Cziczek
Nina is our treasurer, who always has an eye on all expenses and income. In the harbour office she also attends to our guests and is the contact person for authorities, volunteers, staff and the participants of the observation weeks, for whom she also organises accommodation, rental cars and transfers.
Oliver Schäfer
A passionate surfer, Oliver knows how to read the waves and can predict the best times for the trips. So he is entrusted with the organization of the boats and crews. He also takes care of marketing and bookkeeping and customer service in the harbour office.
José Manuel Escobar Casado
As a marine biologist, José is our expert for everything that lives in and around the water. He takes care of the evaluation of the data and researches connections that give us a deeper insight into the marine habitat. In the summer he leads the tours on our boat Spirit.
Brigitte Achatz
As well as providing customer service, Brigitte mainly ensures that firmm friends are always informed about our work and activities: Brigitte organizes the blog entries and the newsletter of firmm. Besides she is the contact person for the sponsorships and does many translations.
Christine Schmid
Christine's tasks include customer support, the online booking system and the translation of texts. As the data protection officer of firmm she also ensures that your data (e.g. for the newsletter) is in safe hands with us.
Sevi Golinvaux
Sevi looks after our French-speaking customers in the port office, where she also gives information sessions as well as doing the translations. She also provides all the information, leaflets and posters to the hotels in the area so that new visitors can find us easily.
Barbara Lindenberg
Visit Barbara in the Centro, our office outside the harbour. Here she informs interested passers-by about our work and the excursions.
Edeltraud Konradt
Edeltraud is fully involved wherever it is needed: during the training of volunteers, during customer service or as a guide before and during the trips.
Olga Castellvi Roca
Olga mainly takes care of our Spanish speaking guests, gives introductory lectures and supports us with telephone inquiries and reservations.
Sebastian Kanzler
Sebastian always has his camera at hand to take breathtaking photos and videos for our facebook page. As a graphic artist and designer, we also owe him the design of our print media, such as flyers, brochures and calendars.
Boat crew
Antonio Manuel Reyes Daza
Antonio is our first captain. He is responsible for the smooth functioning of the boat trips, including inspections, boat papers and safety documents. Antonio is also responsible to the Port Authority.
Daniel Marín Cerrudo
Daniel is our second captain and in the summer months mainly responsible for our boat VISION. At the end of the season he takes care of the winter maintenance of our two boats.
Jaime Francisco Malia Marín
Our mechanic Jaime makes sure that the engines of our boats are always well maintained and ready for our trips.
José Manuel Escobar Casado
In addition to his role as our marine biologist, José also works as a sailor on our boat VISION, where he is happy to answer any questions our visitors may have. He now also has his captain's licence.
David Rivera Salado
David works as a sailor on our boats. With his eagle eyes, he also likes to help finding animals. He now also has his title as a mechanic.
Volunteers
Our committed volunteers usually support us for two to three months. Each season they give about 1500 lectures in four to five languages and step in wherever they are needed. (You would like to become a volunteer at firmm ? You can find further information in our job description for volunteers.)
Further honorary/freelance helpers
Mario Müller
Mario is the initiator and administrator of firmm.org. He keeps the site technically up to date and with his programming skills he makes work a lot easier for us when it comes to entering texts or the booking system.
Heike Pahlow
In cooperation with the firmm-team Heike plans the contents for firmm.org, which she adapts "as short as possible, as long as necessary" for the web page. Also the illustrations of the whale/dolphins as well as the firmm booklet originate from Heike.
Jörn Selling
Jörn was firmm's marine biologist for 20 years. He returned to his homeland Uruguay at the beginning of 2024. He is still available for special questions, also in relation to the content of the firmm-education website.
Sonja Van Den Bossche
Thanks to Sonja firmm.org also exists in Dutch. Beside the translation of the website, she also takes care of our facebook account in Dutch and English and supports us in Tarifa every year for some weeks as a volunteer.
Thomas Brückmann
We have to thank Thomas for our website firmm-education on which we collect all the works that pupils and students have written in cooperation with firmm. On the site and on the corresponding Facebook page Thomas also informs about interesting topics around the sea.
Pia Ackermann
Pia came to Tarifa as a volunteer in 2009 and has supported us since then in marketing and PR. As a marketing specialist, she designed our press kit, organised lectures and wrote PR texts for advertisements, donation platforms, trade fairs, etc.
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Holm
As a biologist and computer expert, Jürgen provides us with advice when new ways of recording or evaluating our data emerge. In cooperation with his wife, Prof. Patricia Holm, he also supervises the biological excursions of the University of Basel to Tarifa.
Jürg Brack
Jürg makes sure that the followers of firmm's video channel on YouTube are provided with great videos of "our" whales and dolphins and always have something to marvel at.