Atlantic spotted dolphins off La Gomera (Spain)
Dolphins and whales can be found anywhere in Europe -
even in our North Sea we have about 15 species!
More famous are the Canary Isles (26 species) and that's where
I went after high school, from june 1995-june 1996.
That year I was a tourguide on Whalewatching trips from the Bonadea II,
a very nice catamaran sailing daily from Puerto Colón in Playa de las Americas (Tenerife).
shortfinned pilot whales with tourist boats
After 10 months I moved to the isle of La Gomera, where Bernd Brederlau from
Club de Mar offered me kindly to join him each day on whalewatching trips.
We both gave information to the (mostly German) tourists and
took an enormous amount of pictures and film.
The website of 'MEER', from biologist Fabian Ritter and colleagues, has more information on whalewatching in the Canaries and links to articles which have been published about the resident populations.
Fabian has done great work on especially the rough-toothed dolphins in the area.
You can find more of his scientific papers through this link.
Bernd and I made a film of approx. 40 minutes and a part of this was shown on the ZDF (German television) in 2004, a very nice sequence of two adult shortfinned pilot whales courting eachother while a calf was (gently) trying to sabotage the courtship.
shortfinned pilot whales
As soon as I find out how I can post a minute or so of this film on verkademeisje.nl,
I'll let you know!
Some more pictures of the Canary Isles species.
Atlantic spotted dolphin
fin whale (photo by Piti)
Atlantic spotted dolphins and a bottlenosed dolphin