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.
"Finally in Tarifa again!" The enthusiasm is written all over Sam Notz's face. The elder son of firmm founder Katharina Heyer travelled with his family to Spain to celebrate her 80th birthday in July 2022.
We were pleased that the 25th season lasted 7 months once again and also didn't bring us too much wind. Apart from an 11-day heavy period of Levante, the season went very well. In June we even experienced a time with extremely large families of Pilot Whales. 30-40 animals in several groups with a strikingly large number of young were not uncommon.
What our captain Dani saw through the binoculars on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar, however, was something quite different. Shortly before noon, we spotted a small orange raft with two refugees.
Only one excursion today, but an extraordinary one. Directly in front of the harbor we meet a group of Bottlenose Dolphins. It is nice that there are also some young animals.
It is considered the heaviest bony fish in the world. It can reach a length of 3.30 metres and a weight of 2.3 tonnes. It is not only found here in the Strait of Gibraltar, but also in the Mediterranean Sea, the North Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean.
On 29 August 2022, the bulk carrier "OS35" carrying a cargo of steel bars for concrete construction collided with the anchored gas tanker "ADAM LNG" in the Bay of Gibraltar.
The Orca season lasted this year from the 25th of July to the 22nd of August. We were able to observe these beautiful black and white dolphins on eight days. From the end of July to the end of August we were able to observe Fin Whales on 14 days and on 20 trips.
Tarifa is literally embraced by the wind, which comes from two main directions with nice sounding names: Levante, or Poniente. In winter there is sometimes a cold north wind (especially at night and in the morning) or a south-west wind.
