Abandoned boat: Spanish dolphins holiday (cont.)
Entry for September 19 2006: Back in the Port Almaria
On leaving San Jose, a buzz worked it’s way though the crew. Something had been sighted out in the Mediterranean and it wasn’t dolphins.
We soon drew up to an abandoned boat. A small aluminum dinghy. The sort that weekend fishermen use back home.
As we approached the rolling tub, the scuttlebutt amongst the crew was that the boat could have been used by drug runners or refugees.
The boat was empty but for a pile of orange life jackets. It’s hard to believe that people set out across the Mediterranean in craft that should be punting about on a quiet lake.
Something must have caught someone’s eye cause the boat was hooked, and bought along side.
Intrepid Carlos (the one whose snoring, I reckon has been scaring away anything with ears for a few hundred kilometres) leapt aboard the wildly pitching dingy and after working away with a wrench, retrieved a compass of surprisingly good quality.
As we pulled away, the sad little vessel was drawn under our Zodiac, and sunk. All that was left was a few life jackets floating on the surface.
This was one of two abandoned boat we had found that day, but the only one that we sank.
We were told that the life jackets are left behind on the boat, which is abandoned close to shore, as the refugees don’t want to leave a trail of evidence of their arrival on shore.
As I am prone to creating back stories for everything, I reckon a group of individuals decided to escape North Africa.
They pooled resources and acquired a boat. One of them knew what he was doing and insisted that they spend decent money on life jackets and a good compass.
After braving the open sea, they abandoned the boat and swam to the Spanish shore.
A comedian reckoned that if they dressed like American tourists, no one would question any strange behaviour.
I reckon the person who knew what he was doing, might possibly do this a lot, and he was at that time making his way back to North Africa to find the next set of desperate individuals.
I'm finding my sea legs and feel much better as we headed out to sea.
As to daily life on the boat…
There was no swimming with dolphins cause we were trying to be non-invasive, but I did pilot the ship for four hours while we tracked a pod as they chased down their lunch, in a huge triangle around the Mediterranean.
Non-invasive isn’t strictly true cause at one point we sent a team out in the Zodiac to get DNA samples, by jabbing a couple of mammals with a ‘core sample knife’ attached to a long pole.
We all have a roster of jobs assigned, such as helping take samples from the dolphins, or keeping watch, or noting down environmental data, or steering the boat.
There are also the domestic chores of cooking and cleaning the tolet.
The most boring job was ‘lookout’ and I had problems maintaining attention while staring out at kilometres of rolling ocean.
The ID process is known as ‘Photo tagging’ where a photo is snapped of the animals fin. The marks, nicks, and gouges are used to identify each animal.
This used to be really expensive and time consuming process back in the days, when the researchers had to wait for the exposed film to be developed on land.
Now Ana spends an hour at the end of the day, downloading the memories from the digital cameras into laptops.
We all take a turn cooking dinner, and people have been putting in a bit of effort, which includes bolting off to the supermarket when we hit land at the end of the day.
We all sit round on the shadowy bare dangling light bulb lit deck, scoffing and chatting about the day, or trips made in the past.
I have discovered that one must never speak of ex lovers, or about previous groups of volunteers
Ric told us that in the past, the permanent crew cooked all the meals for the volunteers, there used to be luxuries such as pillows provided.
We also heard that one group in the past spotted a sperm whale.
Considering how rough we were living, and the lack of sightings, these stories tarnished a bit of the shine from our adventure.
On leaving San Jose, a buzz worked it’s way though the crew. Something had been sighted out in the Mediterranean and it wasn’t dolphins.
We soon drew up to an abandoned boat. A small aluminum dinghy. The sort that weekend fishermen use back home.
As we approached the rolling tub, the scuttlebutt amongst the crew was that the boat could have been used by drug runners or refugees.
The boat was empty but for a pile of orange life jackets. It’s hard to believe that people set out across the Mediterranean in craft that should be punting about on a quiet lake.
Something must have caught someone’s eye cause the boat was hooked, and bought along side.
Intrepid Carlos (the one whose snoring, I reckon has been scaring away anything with ears for a few hundred kilometres) leapt aboard the wildly pitching dingy and after working away with a wrench, retrieved a compass of surprisingly good quality.As we pulled away, the sad little vessel was drawn under our Zodiac, and sunk. All that was left was a few life jackets floating on the surface.
This was one of two abandoned boat we had found that day, but the only one that we sank.
We were told that the life jackets are left behind on the boat, which is abandoned close to shore, as the refugees don’t want to leave a trail of evidence of their arrival on shore.
As I am prone to creating back stories for everything, I reckon a group of individuals decided to escape North Africa.They pooled resources and acquired a boat. One of them knew what he was doing and insisted that they spend decent money on life jackets and a good compass.
After braving the open sea, they abandoned the boat and swam to the Spanish shore.
A comedian reckoned that if they dressed like American tourists, no one would question any strange behaviour.
I reckon the person who knew what he was doing, might possibly do this a lot, and he was at that time making his way back to North Africa to find the next set of desperate individuals.
I'm finding my sea legs and feel much better as we headed out to sea.
As to daily life on the boat…
There was no swimming with dolphins cause we were trying to be non-invasive, but I did pilot the ship for four hours while we tracked a pod as they chased down their lunch, in a huge triangle around the Mediterranean.
Non-invasive isn’t strictly true cause at one point we sent a team out in the Zodiac to get DNA samples, by jabbing a couple of mammals with a ‘core sample knife’ attached to a long pole.
We all have a roster of jobs assigned, such as helping take samples from the dolphins, or keeping watch, or noting down environmental data, or steering the boat.
There are also the domestic chores of cooking and cleaning the tolet.
The most boring job was ‘lookout’ and I had problems maintaining attention while staring out at kilometres of rolling ocean.
The ID process is known as ‘Photo tagging’ where a photo is snapped of the animals fin. The marks, nicks, and gouges are used to identify each animal.This used to be really expensive and time consuming process back in the days, when the researchers had to wait for the exposed film to be developed on land.
Now Ana spends an hour at the end of the day, downloading the memories from the digital cameras into laptops.
We all take a turn cooking dinner, and people have been putting in a bit of effort, which includes bolting off to the supermarket when we hit land at the end of the day.
We all sit round on the shadowy bare dangling light bulb lit deck, scoffing and chatting about the day, or trips made in the past.
I have discovered that one must never speak of ex lovers, or about previous groups of volunteers
Ric told us that in the past, the permanent crew cooked all the meals for the volunteers, there used to be luxuries such as pillows provided.
We also heard that one group in the past spotted a sperm whale.
Considering how rough we were living, and the lack of sightings, these stories tarnished a bit of the shine from our adventure.
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