Spain: Day 1

Today was educational, exciting, exhausting, informative, awe-inspiring, tiring, enlightening, breathtaking…..etc. I began my trip to Spain with a field lab for my Marine Bio class. We made our way by bus 90 minutes south to Tarifa where we were meant to board a boat right away to head out whale watching. Delayed by the fog, we made our way to the small Bamboo Café for lunch. After waiting nearly an hour for yogurt and toast, we then made our way to a Cultural Center with our group where we sat through a lecture on sustainable fishing practices in Spain and Morocco by a local marine biologist. From here, we finally made our way down to the harbor and boarded the boat that would take us out into the Strait of Gibraltar. After circling around the strait for nearly an hour and capturing pictures of the Moroccan coastline (as close as we’re going to get now), we spotted a pod of striped dolphins. We watched them and took pictures for a while until we started to make our way back north towards Spain. On our way back we spotted a group of pilot whales. A large amount of the group decided to swim under the boat where I was standing and hang out there (less than 10 feet away from me) in the water. After seeing only those two groups, we headed back to the Spanish harbor in Tarifa and boarded the bus again to head back to the ship. For being gone nearly 9 hours today, it does not seem like a lot happened. However, along with seeing whales and dolphins in the wild, I was able to collect some good information for my Marine Biology field write up and learned some very interesting things about sustainability of the world fish population. Overall, the day spent out was great. It was also the perfect day for a trip since shops in the town are closed on Sundays.