When I found myself in Gibraltar last Autumn, I couldn’t resist the opportunity of going on a short boat trip to watch the dolphins that populate the Strait between Spain and Morocco.
Disclaimer: I can only vouch for my own experience with Dolphin Adventure. I cannot recommend any other tour operators as they are the only ones I’ve done this with. My account of the trip may not be representative of similar trips organised by other tour operators in the Strait of Gibraltar or anywhere else. Because I don’t do sponsored posts, I do retain the write whatever opinion I hold, whether it be positive or negative.
It’s funny because I’ve never been overly interested in dolphins. I like them just as much as I like other animals, but I’m not as interested in them as I am in octopodes or platypuses. You know those girls in high school who had dolphin pen cases and dolphin pendants and dolphin t-shirts (a group very close in shape and function to horse girls, with the difference that they generally did not personally own a specimen of the species they were obsessed with)? Well, that was never me. And yet, when the opportunity arose, I had to seize it. Because frankly, it’s not every day that you get to observe dolphins in their natural habitat.
Yet, it wasn’t without concerns that I embarked on the small boat in the leisure harbour. Weren’t the dolphins scared of the boats? Didn’t the constant flux of visitors disturb their feeding and/or mating patterns? Was it going to be like that time I shouted at a little child I didn’t know for knocking on the glass to get a reaction from the chimps at the zoo? I do like animals, so I obviously don’t want to invade their space just for the sake of entertainment. But at the same time, I was curious.
The other question was, were we going to see dolphins at all? Oh well. If we didn’t see any, at least it would make for a nice afternoon at sea, which I always enjoy. The sun was shining at last, after a gloomy morning, and the boat gently made its way to the middle of the Strait of Gibraltar.
Interestingly, our guide thoroughly and very directly addressed my concerns as soon as we got on board. The operator we were with (Dolphin Adventure) owns two ships, whose crews each comprise a guide with a double mission, namely: (1) ensure that the customers cause as little disturbance as possible to the animals of the Strait, and (2) provide educational information to the customers. In that order.
Dolphin Adventure was founded in 1994 by husband and wife Tony and Angie Watkins. Since then, not only have they worked with conservation organisations, but they also have had a hand in writing the Gibraltarian legislation regarding responsible dolphin watching, on top of having their own marine biologist, Rocío Espada, who conducts research on board of the Dolphin Adventurer I and II. With such credentials in mind, any customer boarding one of their ships enters a contract which states (among other rules) that the ships aren’t to approach the dolphins to within 60 m (65 yds), and that even if the dolphins decide to approach the ship (which they do quite frequently), no one is allowed to touch them.
Now that may sound like an obvious rule, but trust me, when you work with the general public, it is impossible to overestimate the abysses of stupidity some individuals can — and will — sink to. Plus, the rule really is enforced thanks to the vigilance of the on-board guides, who seem particularly keen on telling you all they know about the dolphins of the Strait of Gibraltar when you start asking them questions (which I did for about half an hour because I definitely am that annoying girl you’ll find in every group).
It took no more than fifteen minutes for us to spot the first dolphins in the distance, at about 200 m (218 yds), and it was a truly magical experience. As I said, I’m not all that into dolphins, but that went through the window as soon as I saw three of them jumping in the waves. I regretted not taking my binoculars (if there are two things you can be sure of about me, it’s that I own a very good pair of binoculars and that I always forget them at home when I travel) because the dolphins were a bit far away, but it soon no longer mattered since we were in for a treat.
See, dolphins are curious creatures, and even though there’s a lot of traffic in the Strait of Gibraltar (it is, after all, one of the busiest passages in the world, with up to 100 000 vessels every year), they still seem interested in whatever boat wasn’t there five minutes before. Our guide explained that it’s because those sea creatures enjoy the movement of the waves, and also because ships are often followed by all sorts of things dolphins might want to eat (particularly Bluefin tuna, apparently). So it didn’t last long before the braver individuals of the group were dispatched on a reconnaissance mission and came closer to our boat.
One interesting thing I came to learn during the short cruise was about the marine biologist I mentioned earlier, Rocío Espada, whose research on the dolphins of the Strait has led her to a fascinating discovery regarding interactions between common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) and bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncates).
While the two species coexist in the Strait of Gibraltar, they usually don’t mix at all, and if given the choice, they’ll avoid each other more often than not. But to every rule, there’s an exception, and in this specific case, the exception is named Billie. For you see, Billie is a female bottlenose dolphin who was adopted by a group of common dolphins 10 years ago, which is a rare enough occurrence to be of interest to the scientific community. But the story doesn’t end there. In 2016, Billie was sighted and photographed holding a newborn dolphin calf to the surface (which is what dolphins do with their babies, no reason to panic here).
After studying the mother and the calf for ten months, Rocío Espada was able to conclude that the calf was a hybrid of common and bottlenose dolphins, which is something that had never been recorded before in the wild (it has happened once in captivity, with a 50/50 rate of survival of the calves). While the hybrid has the body length of a bottlenose dolphin, it exhibits the typical lateral striping of the common dolphin.
Espada and her team published their discovery in Plos One in 2019 under the title Hybridization in the wild between Tursiops truncatus (Montagu 1821) and Delphinus delphis (Linnaeus 1758), and it is VERY interesting. The paper concludes on a call for the introduction of an environmental education plan to minimise the impacts on cetaceans in the Bay of Algeciras, which supports the idea that more can and should be done in order to protect the marine fauna in the region.
After about one hour and a half at sea, the ship started its slow return to the harbour. The dolphins kept leaping out of the water around us. After a while, they seemed to lose interest and progressively faded away in the dark blue waters of the bay. It has been interesting, they seem to be saying as I projected my own impressions unto them, but now it is over.
In the end, I am left with mixed feelings. Do I regret going on that cruise and seeing the dolphins? No. But would I do it again? Also no. I’m in an awkward position here because I did enjoy watching the dolphins in their natural habitat, so I’m not exactly the right person to tell you that you shouldn’t go or that the offer to do it shouldn’t exist. The experience was pleasant, not too crowded, and the explanations given by our guide were both necessary and interesting.
That being said, I remained unconvinced that wild animals aren’t better off when left to their own devices. The Strait of Gibraltar is home to sea mammals, granted, but it is also a busy, polluted, anthropised area where it is increasingly difficult for endangered species to feed and survive. Participating in mass tourism comes at a price, and that price is rarely paid for by the same people (or even species) that take part in it and benefit from it.
I wish I had a more optimistic conclusion to bring to this post, but sometimes the world is just not good enough for the creatures that inhabit it, because some other creatures slightly further up the food chain make it so. The truth is, I don’t know whether Dolphin Adventure and other operators of the same persuasion constitute a real threat to the sea animals of the Strait or if, on the contrary, their presence in the region makes it possible for conservation organisations to receive appropriate funding and support, but I am more and more of the opinion that in case of doubt, it may be better to stay away from it all.
If, like me, all this has left you with the feeling that something should be done, I suggest making a donation to WWF, or symbolically adopting a dolphin (from $25) to help with conservation activities.
