First sighting of Orcas of the season!

Text: Ursina Burkhard, according to the notes of Katharina, photos: firmm

30th July 2011

For several days we had heard that there were orcas in the region and that they were stealing the tuna of the local Spanish and Moroccan fishermen. Unfortunately, the weather was not great either. During the daytime the Levante was too strong. It would have been possible to move out with the boat, but returning would have been rather difficult as we would have lost too much time doing a detour. Therefore, we had to wait till the 30th of July for convenient weather conditions and finally were able to announce the first orca-trip we had been waiting for for so long.

That morning the excitement among all of us was strong, among the crew of the boat, the volunteers and also the guests. Would we be able to find the orcas?

With the weather quite hazy, we were afraid to have bad visibility early in the morning.

But at 10 o’clock our two boats (firmm Spirit und firmm Fly blue) were able to leave and we were full of expectations. We set our target on the underwater mountains situated near Tanger (Morocco). That is where we reached the fishing area of the Spanish fishermen. But we heard that the fixed fishing quota for the red tunas had already been exhausted and that normally they were not allowed to fish anymore. As the orcas only approach to steal the tuna from the fishermen‘s fishing line, we were worried whether they were going to appear.

The sky was misty, the visibility was bad. Poniente force 4 – there was a lot of water splashing against the windshield of the boat.

When we reached the fishermen, they just shook their heads saying that the orcas were not there. We did a large-scale search for them with our two boats, but we were not able to find the black and white giants anywhere.

So we decided that the firmm Fly blue continue the search in this area while we followed with the firmm Spirit in the direction of the Moroccan fishermen, holding on to our last hope.

We already started adapting ourselves to begin our search for pilot whales and therefore studied the conditions of the tides.

But suddenly „ORCAS! “. Our captain Diego had seen them. Of course we immediately followed his exclamation because after eight years of commitment for firmm he had an expert eye and knows everything.

We saw three female orcas circling around the fisher boats.

Pateras and Orcas

The fishermen were working madly trying to draw the tuna out of the water before the orcas had discovered it. But none were successful; just a tunaßs head on the line. The orcas had most likely eaten the rest of the fish before it was reeled in.

Fischermen and tuna´s head

Meanwhile the firmm Fly blue reached the orcas as well. They still had the chance to observe the whales for a while. For us it was time to go back.

Fischermen, Fly blue and orcas

But on the way back, around two miles away from the Pateras we discovered a bigger group of pilot whales, the so called „Guardias“, the guards. These animals watch their territory to hinder the orcas from entering the Strait of Gibraltar. The group consisted of the following animals: Gonzo, Baby Hook, Fernando, Gorro and Gatito, and both a recently born baby and a small calf.

Last year already we could observe how the pilot whales defend their territory and barely left their position.

During the following expedition we met the same group of pilot whales again. Surprisingly, a young whale was with them, not older than two or three weeks. Before we always only met the „Machos“, grown-up males. We were very surprised to see that they took the risk of entering this zone of danger with their offspring. During the following excursions we noticed that those animals really tried to keep their position and didn’t move with the current.

Shortly before we reached Tarifa another surprise: around 100 striped dolphins crossed our way, making a birthday wish of a young passanger, to see baby dolphins on the trip, come true.

striped dolphins