Is it the attraction of whales and dolphins? Is it the “whale woman” Katharina Heyer or the informal atmosphere of the firmm meetings that people from Germany, Austria and all over Switzerland travel to Aarau even at Christmas time?
The 27th season in Tarifa lasted from the 1st of April to the 5th of November 2024. April started with a lot of rain and wind. After that it was a very eventful season, with moderate wind and many beautiful sightings.
This article is less about cetaceans and more about the sea and humans. We'll be looking at how the sea constantly connects people living on different continents.
Ran Levy-Yamamori visited us in June to film a documentary about Katharina. It is called ‘As long as I can’ and tells the story of her life project in the Strait of Gibraltar.
… was rather disappointing in terms of the number of sightings. However, some encounters were very remarkable and intense. We saw the largest of all dolphins 10 times. Five times in July and five times in August.
I don't think I've ever seen the firmm team as excited as on 5 July at 15.30, when the boat returned from the second trip of the day. You can find out why that was the case here.
On 01 July we encountered a remarkably large group of about 30 pilot whales, which were moving extremely fast at the surface, jumping without any recognisable course.
On Sunday 28th April we had the great surprise and at the same time the great joy of being able to observe the release of a loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) into the open sea and enjoy the first flapping of its flippers in the wild.
Our marine biologist Jörn Selling reports about the positive and negative impressions of the last season in his photo review. Sit back and take the images in.
