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If you want to join us in the Strait of Gibraltar in 2004, the program of research volunteers is available here. A special “killer whale” mission took place in April. Like last year, we went near Barbate to study the killer whales feeding around tuna nets. The story will be told in the next Newsletter. This Newsletter is entirely dedicated to the LIFE project "Conservation of Cetaceans and Turtles in Murcia and Andalusia" supported by the EU, in which CIRCE participates in the Strait of Gibraltar and Gulf of Cadiz. Since 2002, CIRCE carries out 5 LIFE missions of 12 days every year. The November one has been somehow shortened due to the bad weather conditions that regularly rage at that time of the year in the Strait of Gibraltar. Usually, we leave Sotogrande on the East of Gibraltar and we go from port to port until Huelva, the border with Portugal. In January, leaving Algeciras to go to Barbate, we met a small group of common dolphins. The next day, we reached Cadiz where we had to cancel the campaign due to bad weather conditions. The Gulf of Cadiz is generally quite poor in cetacean, thus, it did not surprise us not to meet any on that second day at sea. Onboard the Elsa, 6 persons relay each other every 40 minutes between the different tasks. There are always two persons on top of the tower, looking for animals (marine birds and mammals, fish and turtles), who take data every 20 minutes on the number and type of boats in a 3 nautical miles circle around Elsa. These data are then confronted with sightings of cetaceans in order to see the possible interactions between the animals and/or human activities. A third person drives the boat and, every 20 minutes, takes data of the boat’s position, weather, depth, salinity and temperature. The 3 other persons can rest to be completely efficient when they return to the observation tower which require a lot of concentration. This year, we will do several LIFE missions only in the Strait of Gibraltar as we prefer to focus our effort on the richest part of the study zone, as the biopsy mission on bottlenose dolphins in January. Ask the program We present to you the harbour porpoise that we meet near Huelva, at the northern limit of the LIFE project research zone. You will find all the details of this project and its objectives that are important for the future of the Mediterranean Sea. In “behind the researches”, we will share some unforgettable moments of the January bottlenose dolphin biopsy mission. CIRCE Newsletter n° 8
- made by Philippe Verborgh & Anne Collet |