Preface Note: You can find out more about where I’m volunteering by going to Blue-World.org. Check out their site, and support them if you can, they are doing good work here.
I arrived in Rijeka, Croatia on Sunday via an all night train from Budapest, via Zagreb. The train ride was ok for the most part, spent the first half of it in a cabin full of girls from Barcelona, and then the other half from Zagreb in a cabin with a Hungarian couple on their way to Croatia for a holiday. Nice couple, but the guy talked way too much, and I really wanted to sleep. The only excitement was when I got off the train in Zagreb, under the impression that the train was going to be there for over an hour before leaving, to go get some food. I found a McDonalds that was open, and being it was my only real choice, I got me a “Mc Greek Grill” sandwich, which was actually quite good (don’t look for it in the US McDonalds, they won’t have them). It was essentially a grilled chicken breast in Pita bread with tomato, cucumbers, and greek Tzatziki sauce. Considering I was starving, and I broke my own rule about ever going to a McDonalds, I think I did ok.
Well anyway, I get back to the train station, and my train is not there anymore! I kinda freaked out, being that all my stuff was still on the train. I found a conductor, and he told me that they just moved the cars to a different platform until the train left again in an hour or so. Whew! He pointed me to the train, and I was reunited with my stuff.
The plan was to get to Rijeka, rent a room there and then take a bus to Veli Losinj to start my volunteer stint with the project the next day. When I got off the train in Rijeka, it was still quite early in the morning, so I had to wait for stuff to start opening up before I can look for a room somewhere. I stopped by a cafe that was open across from the train station and killed some time there. Once stuff started opening up around 8AM on a Sunday morning, I started walking around looking for a hotel or tourist office to see if I can find a room. I did find a kiosk and it gave me the locations of a couple of hotels close by where I was. I walked over to both of them, only to find that neither had room. Turned out also that those 2 hotels were two of only three in the whole town. So, that wasn’t good. I went to the tourist office, which was open now, and she said that there was no chance of getting a room anywhere in Rijeka. So, I text messaged Andrea, my contact at ADP in Veli Losinj, and told her the situation. The lady at the tourist office said I had a far better chance of getting a room for one night in Veli Losinj, than I did in Rijeka.
So I hopped the next bus to Veli Losinj. During the bus ride, I got a message back from Andrea, that she secured me a room, and all was good. So relieved, I sat back and enjoyed the spectacular scenery during the bus ride from Rijeka. This bus had to go through some of the most beautiful coastline I’d seen in years. Steep limestone cliffs, turquoise blue waters, blue sky, man, this was going to be cool. The bus also had to board a ferry to cross the narrow strait from the mainland to Cres, the first island in the chain of islands that make up the Losinj Archipelago. The more I was on that bus, the more I hated myself for not being here right now aboard Andiamo. What in the hell was I thinking? Well at least I know now that I’ll definitely be planning on sailing these waters in the near future.
After the spectacular bus ride, I got off in Veli Losinj, the end of the line. It’s not a big place, the town is built at the end of a narrow peninsula that makes the tip of Veli Losinj island. I had to go to the town center to get to the tourist agency that made arrangements for my room. They didn’t reopen until 5pm, so I had a couple of hours to kill. I spent this time enjoying drinks at a terrace bar, walking around a bit, and checking out the waters from the harbor point. When the office reopened, I got my room, albeit after a bit of a wait because they were busy as hell. That’s one thing about this place, it’s loaded with tourists, mostly Italian.
So cut to the chase, I got settled into my room, took a nap, showered, changed and headed out to get some dinner. Most of the restaurants were pretty packed and really expensive, but I found a little joint with a guy who was grilling outside. When I was watching him, he was grilling some beef, and putting it on some flatbread with some nice sauce on the side. It looked good, so I went in and grabbed a table. When the waiter came, he couldn’t speak English, but he could speak italian. So good for me, because it gave me a chance to warm up my italian after a bit of awhile. I told him I wanted what the guy outside was grilling, the beef and flatbread stuff. He said that there was no more beef, only fish. I told him that the fish was ok, thinking he was cooking it the same way. He asked me if I wanted fries on the side, and I said sure.
About 10 minutes later, he comes back with a bowl full of, and I’m not kidding, deep fried whole minnows, extra crispy, with heads and tails on. And a plate full of fries drowning in ketchup. I was initially shocked by the food, because it was not at all what I was ordering, or expecting. The waiter just kinda looked at me, wondering what the expression on my face meant. I just sort of winged it, and said ok. And started munching away on my whole fried minnows. Only thing was that I would not eat the heads. I draw the line on heads. So here I was biting off the bodies, and then tossing the little minnow heads over to the side of my plate. Can’t say they tasted bad, they were quite salty, but I can’t say that they tasted fantastic either.
So after that wonderful first meal in Veli Losinj, I decided to walk around a bit. Though the town was mobbed with tourists, it had its charm. The harbor area was a small intimate little hamlet, with several small fishing boats moored inside the little cul-de-sac, and the bigger boats were tied up on the dock closer to the end of the breakwater. It looked like a wonderful place to come in while cruising these waters. At the harbor point, there’s a walk that goes around a set of cliffs over to the other little harbor that is part of Veli.
Because the town is so condensed on the peninsula, there is walking only within the town limits. All the cars have to be parked outside of the town at a variety of parking lots. Then you have to make your way down some very narrow, and sometimes slippery polished cobblestone streets to get into the town. I had a bit of fun trying to figure out my way back to the center and to my room after walking through the winding narrow streets a bit.
I turned in a bit early that night, and the next morning, I reported for duty at the ADP’s office and education center, which was right in the center of town, and very hard to miss. I met my contact, Andrea, who in turn introduced me to the rest of the staff. It was a small group of researchers, interns, students and at the time, I was the only volunteer. I got to meet everyone pretty quickly, and with the help of Marta, a Croatian student intern working with the project, I got moved into the house. Surprisingly, the house is quite comfortable, with all the amenities. Because the volunteer staff is quite low this period, I was lucky enough to get my own room. So for now, I’m enjoying the luxuries.
The rest of the first day went fairly quietly. Everyone was busy with some outstanding stuff, and the person who usually coordinates everything, Nikolina, one of the full-time Croatian researchers was out of town until later that night. When she got back that night, she immediately started coordinating my activities, and I was reassured that things were going to stay interesting.
The 2nd day, I got a lecture from Nikolina about ADP’s goals, and its current activities. She then showed me what one of my main tasks was going to be during my time here. They need to severely update a database of recent dolphin sighting data, and I was going to be doing as much of it as possible. Basically, I was going to spend at least 2-3 hours a day inputting data from the field logs. Not so fascinating work, no, but I can see why it’s necessary. So, to fill a few hours, I went back to the house, and started inputting the data.
Within an hour of starting my chimpwork, we got a call that Annika, the head researcher, a German marine biologist who is working on her PH.D, decided that the weather and conditions were good enough to take the boat out for a sighting run. Everyone was pretty excited about that, because the weather has been bad the past couple of weeks, and they haven’t been out once. So within a half hour, we were onboard ADP’s large inflatable RIB, and off we went. The weather was awesome, sea conditions were good, but unfortunately, we didn’t spot any dolphins. While it was a tad disappointing, I think everyone felt good about being back out on the boat. For me, it was a good primer as to how the research procedures worked. Nikolina, took some underwater acoustic recordings to get a good sample of ambient noise underwater. They make these random samplings so they can get a good idea of what kind of noise conditions they find dolphins under, so they can better understand how noise affects where they actually go.
For example, in their research, they have found that the dolphins are spotted further and further away from where boat noise is prevalent. Since dolphins like staying close to the coast and continental shelf, this puts them at a disadvantage because most times the sounds they are trying to get away dissipate enough only when they reach really deep water. Only problem is that their food supply, the fish they eat for the most part, stick to the continental shelf too. So ADP is gathering more and more data to figure out how these moves by the dolphins they research ultimately affects their ability to reach their food supply. Since we didn’t spot any dolphins today, there would be no data as to where the dolphins were. But it was fascinating to see what they do nonetheless.
That evening, after dinner, we all walked down to a beachfront bar called Rovenska for a few cold ones. It was a bit cold and windy, but we stuck it out enough to enjoy the scenery. This place should be really quite fun when the weather is good. I’m sure I’ll find out. Hey, it’s the “pub crawler” in me.
Today, my third official day on the project, I got a lecture from Marta, the student intern, who gave me more information about ADP’s activities, the organization’s history, and introduced me to some of their better known dolphins in the region. ADP has identified and catalogued about 120+ dolphins who they consider residents of the Losinj Marine reserve. These are the dolphins that they focus their research on. This population has been tracked constantly since 1987, making it the longest running bottlenose dolphin research project in the Mediterranean Sea. They identify the dolphins by markings, scratches and nicks on their dorsal fins. These markings are caused by social interaction, playing and fighting, and are unique to each dolphin.
After the lecture, I proceeded to work on my database stuff for a couple of hours. I knew I was scheduled to work in the education center, which is a place that allows tourists to go in and get information about dolphins, watch multimedia about dolphins and find about how to support the project. My job was essentially to show people around and give them information about the volunteer programs and how they can get involved. Oh, and I had to make sure that they paid the admission, because unfortunately, most of the tourists try to get in without paying the measly 1.50 Euros that we charge adults, and the 1 Euro we charge for kids over 6.
So a couple of hours into the day, I’m working on the database updates, and we get the call. We’re going out on the boat again in 30 minutes. The weather was iffy, but seas were calm, so Annika wanted to try again. So in a half hour, we were off. This time, it didn’t take long for us to spot a large group of dolphins, about 17 of them, that were playing not far off the coast.
When we first spotted them, more than a kilometer or so away, they were playing and jumping their hearts out. It was pretty cool seeing that from such a distance. By the time we got to their area, they subdued their behavior a bit, but they hung around. We were able to watch them swim, play, frolic and in a few cases, breach and flip out of the water. It was especially cool to watch the juvenile dolphins swimand jump in sync with their mothers. On our way back to the harbor, Nikolina spotted another group swimming dead ahead of us, again more than a kilometer or so away. But by the time we got to where they were, they simply disappeared. Oh well, so far, I’m 1 for 2, and ok.
My first evening shift at the education center was quiet. There really wasn’t any traffic on account of the weather being windy and bad. So I cut out early, and got back to the house in time for dinner.
The weather should be good tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens.