Friendly dolphins?

Dolphins aren't always friendly

One of the great pleasures of offshore sailing is the chance to enjoy the company of bowriding dolphins. They are often our companions, and are a useful antidote to take your mind off the size of the waves in a big breeze. Common dolphins always seem to me to be the fighter aircraft of the seas, with their aerobatic displays breathtaking by day, but perhaps even more spectacular by night when phosphorescence streams from their bodies leaving vapour trails of pure green fire.

Watching more closely from the bow, though, reveals a different side to this playful behaviour. What we think of as pure sport means more to the dolphin as a way to get into the pressure wave ahead of our bow, putting the animal in pole position in a sweet spot of low energy drive. A bit like being weightless, as one cetacean expert explained it to me.

And that can lead to some decidedly ‘unfriendly’ dolphin behaviour. We’ve watched bottlenose dolphins repeatedly bump each other out from under our bow, and last summer off the coast of Portugal observed the common dolphin in the image above launch a really vicious attack on its nearest neighbour, beak wide open before ramming the smaller animal and driving it off.

And that would certainly make me think twice before swimming with these creatures. We seem to have invested dolphins with a whole range of quasi-mystical healing powers, which in turn has been used to us to excuse the inexcusable – keeping these magnificent wild creatures in captivity. And although we’ve seen another less cuddly side to dolphin behaviour, that’s the side we like the best – wild and free, not in a sterile pool trained into some sort of mental straitjacket for our entertainment. Better they are like the open sea – untamed, powerful, and, on occasion just a little scary.

Blue water at last

Nightfall in Biscay

We returned home to Falmouth, to take stock of our situation and say our goodbyes. Last minute checks of the boat, and stocking up with spares for the long haul took up most of our time before crossing the Channel.

The French coast has its attractions, but is not renowned for marine life. Bottlenose dolphins and basking sharks are occasionally seen around places like the Glénans, but it’s certainly nothing like as rich as Cornwall or Pembrokeshire. We saw a pod of Risso’s dolphins near les Sept Iles, but that was about it. And so we tied up in the lovely little port of Camaret for the winter, and caught up on work and preparing the boat ready for crossing Biscay the following spring.

Biscay is the first big “blue water’ hurdle, and for many crews we’ve met who have completed round the world voyages, the worst weather they faced over the whole journey was in Biscay. If the wind is from the west, the seas are huge, and you face a hard battle to fight your way out of the bay. If winds are from the east, it can be a wild ride down to northwest Spain in gale force winds, so either way you need to have a good boat, a strong crew and be ready to face the music.

But as is often the way, the tiger turned out to be a kitten, and we motored nearly all the way in flat calm conditions, baking in the sunshine reflecting off an indigo sea. Great conditions for spotting marine life though, and Biscay (especially along the shelf break) is well known for fin whales and other major cetaceans. We had common dolphins as companions day and night, as expected, and five orcas purposefully crossed our bows one morning, but, sadly, no great whales. But a major surprise (for both parties, I suspect) was when two beaked whales breached spectacularly several times right beside the boat, just as we approached the Spanish coast. No time to get a camera out before they were gone – but maybe that’s for the best, as a vivid memory is always better than a poor picture

Change is on the way

Even the terns are in favour - channel marker at Arisaig

It may sound strange, but if all we wanted from our voyage was to view marine life, we might well just have stayed in home waters. Despite the centuries of intensive fisheries, whaling and the industrialization of the seas around Britain and Ireland, our waters still host an impressive range of species. Over the last twenty years I have seen more than a dozen different species of cetacean, well over a thousand basking sharks and ten leatherback turtles, without even considering the extraordinary range of bird life that rely on our seas for their living.

So by way of a last, lingering farewell to my favourite place of all, our first season was spent going North, to the western isles of Scotland. As anyone who has spent time there will know, it’s a place where you have to seize the moment – before the weather turns against you. We struck lucky though, with ideal (if windy) weather, and saw plenty of sharks, although minke whales, that used to be so numerous were once again in very short supply. During my time (since the early nineties) working on surveys in the area, there have been some fairly seismic changes in the pattern of distribution and abundance of a number of species, perhaps due to changing patterns of food availability from plankton upwards associated with climate change.

And it’s not just ‘charismatic megafauna’ either that has suffered – the once vibrant white fish fleet has all but disappeared, reducing income and employment in many remote communities. The growing enthusiasm for wild places and marine wildlife has driven a major expansion of ecotourism throughout the region, helping to redress that balance, but equally, ecotourism itself depends on healthy stocks of fish to support wildlife. So fishermen and conservationists both have a stake in this, and it’s to be hoped that as this becomes clearer, both sides will recognise the potential benefits that MPA’s can offer, and see the regeneration of fish stocks as a key factor in safeguarding the future of this wonderful wild place, for everyone’s benefit.

Introducing...Colin Speedie

Hi, I’m Colin Speedie and over the coming months I’ll be passing you thoughts and observations on what we encounter from a marine conservation perspective during our voyage aboard our Ovni 435 yacht ‘Pèlerin’. We’re currently in Rabat, Morocco, after a slow start from the far northwest of Scotland in 2009, and hope to be crossing the Atlantic to Brazil late this year.

I’ve been an MCS member for over 25 years, and during that time have worked with MCS on a range of projects as a field researcher, including turtle, jellyfish and marine litter programmes, whilst carrying out surveys along the western seaboard of the UK into the distribution of the basking shark. But after nearly 20 years of that work my wife Louise and I decided to build our own boat built and set off on an open-ended voyage around the world, taking in many of the richest marine life areas.

Our boat is heavily built in aluminium, and has a lifting keel and rudder that mean she can float in less than a metre of water, ideal for exploring lagoons and rivers. She is like an ocean going Land Rover, and has many modifications to make her as self-sufficient as possible, such as extensive wind and solar power, and we sail her whenever there is enough wind to make progress.

Living afloat, we are not only aware of the rhythms and moods of the ocean, but are also able to witness it in a way that few others can – we’re very lucky, as there’s still so much to celebrate about the oceanic world. But at the same time, as we all know, it’s not all good news for our blue planet, and so we’ll be hoping to bring you thoughts and images from that world, for good or ill, that we hope will interest you.

Oh, and the name of our yacht, ‘Pèlerin’? French for basking shark – of course!