Europe > Spain > Costa de la Luz > Puerto de Santa Maria > Articles > Voyage of the Toftevaag

“Cetacean soup at two o’clock!” was the traditional call to action-stations from spotters in the crow’s nest of the Toftevaag. It would signify that the sea was ‘boiling’ with a herd of anything up to eight hundred dolphins.

Then a group of researchers from North Carolina came onboard to work and the cry was never heard again. Like overly-sensitive nurses, the Toftevaag lookouts seemed to understand that people who were struggling to save endangered marine turtles might not appreciate gratuitous use of the word ‘soup.’

Few of the yachtsmen who sail the busy waters around the Straits of Gibraltar are even aware that giant marine turtles exist here. For local fishermen, however, they are a constant irritant; every day a hundred loggerhead turtles are accidentally caught in the long-lines of the Spanish fishing fleet.

Dr Scott Eckert of Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST) believes that this area may be the meeting place of long-ranging seafarers from the Caribbean loggerhead population and that of Greece and Cyprus.

“A loggerhead turtle has to dodge the fishing fleet for at least twenty years before it can return to breed,” he explains. “We need to develop safer fishing methods and a protected zone where marine animals can mature in safety. If we can’t help Spain’s next generation of breeding turtles to survive now, we might never get a second opportunity.”

So WIDECAST has come to the Alboran Sea - where Mediterranean mixes with Atlantic - to begin a programme of satellite tracking that Dr Eckert’s assistant Stacey Kubis describes as “teenage turtle alien abduction.”

Aboard the Toftevaag they have found the perfect mobile laboratory and a crew that has an unmatched knowledge of what is now recognised as the most productive region in the Mediterranean. Ana Cañada and her husband Ric Sagarminaga (skipper) have renovated this hundred year-old classic timber sailing ship and have fitted her out with all the high-tech paraphernalia of a modern research vessel.

Ric and Ana have spent the last decade studying Alboran’s wealth of marine life that includes dolphins (striped, common, bottlenose and Risso’s), pilot whales, fin whales, beaked whales, sperm whales, orcas, great whites and three types of marine turtles. The data that the Toftevaag is collecting on all these populations will finally be used to establish the boundaries of Spain’s most important marine reserve.

As the Toftevaag eased her way out of Sotogrande marina one morning last summer she was carrying a typically international crew: 2 Spanish, 1 Dutchman, 3 Americans, 1 Swede, 2 Germans, 1 French and 3 Brits. Ric and Ana’s daughters, Claudia and Carolina (already impressively tri-lingual at only 10 and 7 years old) scrambled through the rigging with the same casual deftness with which other kids field their text messages.

With a few exceptions we were mostly confirmed land-lubbers but during the couple of days we needed to get our sea legs the Mediterranean treated us gently. We had come as volunteers, ‘recruited’ through the charity organisation Earthwatch Institute, to spend eleven days living on the Toftevaag and providing the extra man-power which is vital if the marine park is to become a reality in the near future.

This was no lazy, Andalusian beach-break. Dawn to dusk was spent at sea in a rolling roster of helm-duty, deck-watch, analysing water salinity and temperature, listening for ‘submarine conversations’ on the hydrophone and recording changes on the depth-sounder as it builds up the first complete underwater map of the Alboran Sea. ‘Extreme lookout-duty’ in a swaying crow’s-nest (12 metres above the waves) was optional.

Not all was routine. We stopped for swims on the open sea - occasionally sharing the water with dolphins, but making sure to put some distance between us and any neighbourhood sharks. Several times we were buffeted by sudden squalls that made spotting impossible (and turned the crow’s-nest seat into a rollercoaster ride).

It was unusual to sail for more than two hours without seeing dolphins or pilot whales and once we were joined by two fin whales (which fall short of the title for ‘world’s biggest animal’ by barely two metres). Striped dolphins, with their sleek hourglass patterns, jumped alongside as we travelled and common dolphins surfed the Toftevaag’s bow wave. Speeding dolphins can swim at up to 25mph and a splinter group of volunteers would often have to scramble into the Zodiac to get close enough to collect data. Notes are taken on behaviour (travelling or hunting), on what animals are in the group (cows, calves) and painless skin swabs are taken with a ‘harpoon’ tipped with a brillo-pad (for DNA analysis). Up on the Toftevaag’s bow Ana was permanently busy adding to the thousands upon thousands of photographs of dorsal fins that she is taking for the Europhlukes database. The marks on a dolphin’s or whale’s fins are as individual as our fingerprints and Europhlukes (which is modelled on the FBI’s list of most-wanted criminals) will soon be able to provide detailed knowledge of the movements of hundreds of individual marine mammals.

Several times we got to see what ‘cetacean soup’ really means. A herd of six hundred leaping dolphins is one of the most incredible natural sights in the world. All around the ship, and seemingly all the way to the horizon, the water was full of splashing dolphins.

Turtle spotting is not so easy. In fact it takes a seriously practised eye to discern the subtle spec of olive-brown that betrays a basking turtle. “Turtle! 200 meters at 2 o’clock!” comes Stacey’s shout from the crow’s-nest. We scramble into the Zodiac and within a minute ease up behind the giant reptile. Ric leaps into the water and grabs hold of the front and back of the turtle’s shell. It might sound like too much fun to be seriously scientific but experience has shown that what the team calls ‘turtle rodeo’ is the only effective way of subduing the animal before it can dive.

The turtles were measured, weighed, checked for parasites and scanned for hooks. Then a sliver of flipper would be taken for analysis and a microchip and a satellite-tracking device fitted. By the time the captive goes back overboard after its ‘alien abduction’ Dr Eckert estimates that it has roughly $10,000 of WIDECAST’s precious budget riding on its back.

A lot of hopes are also riding on the crew and volunteers of the Toftevaag. Well-known in every port and marina between Almería and Tarifa she has become, quite literally, the flagship in the fight to establish a new Marine Protected Area (MPA) on the edge of one of the world’s busiest shipping channels.

The Toftevaag’s classic good looks have helped the scientists to win support from a section of the community that might have been expected to be against the foundation of a marine park. But Andalusian fishermen are not blind to the decline in catches and many are in favour of the establishment of a protected area that would become the spawning grounds for the catches of the future.

Ana has already secured assurance from the Spanish Navy that they will refrain from manoeuvres in areas that are frequented by sensitive beaked and pilot whales, which suffer internal haemorrhaging caused by the fleet’s sonar equipment. Although the Toftevaag has the full backing of the government they are now entangled in a web of red-tape as the national government and the Junta of Andalucía squabble over who should actually pick up the final bill for the running of the park.

This can be frustrating but while the politicians haggle, the Toftevaag continues her long hours at sea. As Ana points out: “we have to act now because with each year that passes there will be less marine-life to protect.”

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