A Whale of a Time in Tarifa

By CHARLOTTE HINDLE

"Look, is that one over there?" I shouted, "And there and there; oh my God, we’re surrounded".

And we were. We had powered out of Tarifa, mainland Spain (and Europe’s) most southerly town, and headed towards the Moroccan coastline at a fair old pace. Just as my fellow passengers and I were starting to think that we’d be unlikely to see more than a few distant oil tankers and ferries traversing this maritime bottleneck, the boat suddenly slowed. We found ourselves in the midst of countless dolphins. To begin with, all we could see were their arched backs and fins but then they started jumping out of the water, rushing headlong in pairs towards us and swimming, bodies smooth and streamlined, a couple of inches below the water beside our boat.

We have all seen dolphins hundreds of times on TV. We all know what they look like and how they move but nothing prepares you for seeing them for the first time in the wild. For starters, they are larger than you expect. "Wow, they really are enormous fish", I exclaimed, before a six-year-old standing at my side reminded me that they’re not fish, they are mammals. Then, they’re faster and more acrobatic than you have ever given them credit for. Finally, they’ll tire of you before you tire of them: when they’ve had their fill, they’ll race away, melting into the caps of the waves, and leave you wanting more.

A r umour quickly passed around the boat that some orca whales had been spotted. As these "killer whales" are not often seen in the wild, the tension mounted. The boat sped further along the Moroccan coast, not so much bobbing in the waves as bashing through them, throwing 25 keen wildlife-spotters from side to side. At one point, I did wonder if one of the children might be thrown overboard.

Before signing up for the two-hour trip, I had asked the company how likely it was that we would see a big fish, I mean mammal. "It’s 100 per cent", was the instant answer; and, to back it up, the enterprise promises a second voyage for free if no cetaceans (marine mammals) are seen.

I imagine the guarantee is rarely called upon. The Strait of Gibraltar, that rough, narrow passage of water between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean is home to seven species of cetaceans. Some, like the dolphins, live here all year round, others just pass through in certain seasons.

I think the orcas were a fish-erman’s tale; we never saw them. But, what we did find were pilot whales. Their shiny, deep-black backs curved in the water like dolphins but they moved more sedately. It struck me that the noses resembled well-rounded leather settees. They were definitely at the diminutive end of the whale- dimension spectrum, but it was still an amazing experience to be so close to a vast living creature. And for some of the younger passengers, these giants of the deep were straight from a storybook.

Charlotte paid [euro]27 ([pound]19) for a two-hour trip organised by Turmares in Tarifa, Spain (00 34 956 68 07 41; www.turmares.com).

(c) 2007 Independent, The; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.