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Adriatic Dolphin Project – Veli Losinj, Croatia – Day 4 to Day 6

Aug 20th, 2005
by Tony.

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.

The end of my first workweek here in Veli Losinj, was on an interesting note. First of all, we had been out on sighting runs everyday this week, which was the first time in quite some time that they have been able to do that thanks to the weather. So I’m a lucky bastard as far as that goes.Second of all, we’ve been able to have two good sightings out of four trips, so we’re batting .500. That’s also a good average all things considered. It’s high tourist season in the area, and that means lots of boat traffic, noise, and other factors that typically force the dolphins to head more offshore for some peace. So Annika, ADP’s head researcher, has been rather pleased with the results this past week, although she did show some signs of crankiness on the days we didn’t see anything.

So to recap the past three days’ activities:

On Thursday, we went out with just three of us, Annika, Niko, and me. Marta, the student intern, had to go do some radio interviews for the center in the morning, so she couldn’t come. We headed out close to 9AM, and though we covered alot of ground, didn’t see any dolphins. Niko did manage to get several good audio samples from the acoustic points of the reserve, so that means that we at least obtained some good audio data. We stayed out til about 2pm, before calling it a day.

The rest of the day, I worked on some database input for the navigation data. That evening, we went to Rovenska for Pete, a British PH.D candidate who’s working with ADP part-time right now, because it was his birthday. The newest volunteer, Udo, a guy from Munich, Germany, who had volunteered with ADP three years earlier, showed up that night for his stint, so we all got to meet him.

Though Pete called it a night about 11-ish, a few of us, including Niko, Marta, Vesna (ADP’s educational director), a local guy named Igor, and Martina, a friend of Vesna’s, managed to hang out a bit later. The weather was nice for a change, so we made the most of it. They were also playing some cool music for a change.

Friday morning, Annika declared that we were going out for a sighting run first thing. Some of us were understandably a bit slow in getting out of bed due to previous night’s activities :/>“>. Still, we made it out to the water by just after 10 AM.</p> <p>It took us a good two hours of scanning the area before we spotted a large group of dolphins swimming and feeding near where we saw tuna surface feeding. By the time we were done counting, we were over 18. We also spotted two newborns whom Annika and Niko had seen for the first time, so they were extremely excited about that.</p> <p>Now, the trick is to figure out who the mother is. See, newborn and calf dolphins do not always swim with their mothers. Because of the social structure that dolphins have, many times the infant and juvenile ones will swim with a “babysitter” adult if the mother has other things to attend to. So even though they can almost always identify the adult that’s caring for the calf or newborn, that doesn’t mean that’s the mother.</p> <p>So, it’s necessary to track the calf’s “chaperone” over several sightings before they can more accurately figure out who the mother is. This also helps them determine the sex of the adult, since they can’t always get a look at the adult’s genitalia from a distance and match up those images to the markings on the adult’s dorsal fin that are used to personally identify them. When they see a calf swimming with a dolphin and come to the conclusion that the adult is a female, that’s just more information. The funny thing is that many times the dolphin has a male name, and just ends up keeping it even though she’s female.</p> <p>So the two newborns’ sighting was pretty exciting stuff. We even saw one of them jump completely out of the water in a very rare display. It wasn’t much bigger than a cocker spaniel. Annika estimated him to be about between a few days and a couple of weeks old. She also had never seen a newborn jump out of the water that high, so that was a first. But it happened so fast that she couldn’t get a photo of it.</p> <p>After a good hour of tracking and cataloguing the dolphins, we headed back to Veli. It was a great day, weather was fantastic, and we were all getting pretty fried. But it was good for me to get some of my “boat tan” back.</p> <p>Last night, the center got a report of a dead loggerhead turtle that had washed ashore not far from Veli Losinj. The center monitors other kinds of sensitive sea life such as sea turtles in the Adriatic as well. Whenever there’s a dead animal report, they will dispatch a crew to investigate the carcass, take samples, and document as much as possible.</p> <p>In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, they were called to try to rescue a severely injured calf that was floating off the rocks of one of the local beaches. Annika surmised that the dolphin was severely injured by a dynamite blast, perpetrated by fishermen who try to kill large quantities of bluefish and tuna by dropping a charge of dynamite into the water close to a school of them. Even though dynamite fishing is totally illegal in Croatia, and there are big fines and even jail time for doing it, it’s not so often prosecuted.</p> <p>The calf was so badly injured that it didn’t make it alive to shore. Annika had a hard time telling me the story, it’s obviously upsetting for her to deal with such senseless killing, particularly by fishermen who break the law. They ended up dissecting the calf on the beach so they can see the internal injuries upclose and take some valuable tissue samples. Annika was also afraid that the calf’s mother or babysitter may also be dead, since calves so young almost always swim beside one. And even if the calf is injured or even dead, the mother won’t just leave it. So the theory is that something unfortunate also happened to the adult. They scanned the area for any other casualties, but were not able to find any.</p> <p>Back to the sea turtle situation. This morning, we loaded up the car and headed to the location where the dead turtle was believed to be. We picked up Vesna in Mali Losinj, since she was the first to receive the report, and knew who the contact was. We arrived to the small bay north of Mali Losinj, and asked some of the locals around if they knew where the turtle was. After some more canvassing, we were told that we were on the wrong beach, and that we needed to go to the beach on the other side of the isthmus that we were on. Only problem was that this area was inaccessible by car. We can only get to that shore by boat.</p> <p>So we headed back to Veli, moved our gear to the boat, and headed over to the location. After a 30 minute or so boat ride, we arrived. There were some people onshore and one guy said he saw the dead turtle, but it was last sunday. He pointed us to the location where he said the turtle was. Over on the other side of the bay, close to a couple of houses, on a pebbled beach. We motored over to that spot, tied up to a dock, and walked around the area trying to find the turtle.</p> <p>The search proved fruitless. Annika came to the conclusion that the turtle was either already picked up, or was washed off the beach by tides or rough weather. But, since we were already there, some of us figured we’d jump in for a swim in the cool, clear Adriatic water. I was the first to jump in, and it was nice, but pretty damn cool. I swam only a few minutes before getting back in the boat in the sun. Niko, Vesna and Udo also swam. After we had our fun, we got ready to shove off. I was pretty close to dry already. But unfortunately, our claw anchor we had off the stern of the boat was caught underneath a rock in bad way where we couldn’t pull it up. So I had to dive in and free it up.</p> <p>After that, we did a brief search for dolphins in the area where we were, since they had spotted dolphins there before. After about 30-40 minutes, Annika called it and we headed back to Veli.</p> <p>So tonight, we’re supposed to head up to Mali Losinj and go to a couple of nightspots up there. Mali is much bigger than Veli, so there’s a bit more to do nightlife-wise. So we’ll see how that goes.</p> <p class=Comment from: gay Lannon [Visitor]

OK, keep the night life to a minimum if you can. You’re not a kid any more, and the dolphins need you more than the rest of the wildlife does!
Love,
Gay

2005-08-21 @ 19:06

Comment from: Martin Tse [Visitor]

Slow down ‘old man’. You need to rest and have some sushi!

Peace out! Brother!
Martin

2005-08-24 @ 07:17

Posted in: News.

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