First week in Porto

After arriving in Porto me and 1st mate spent one day sorting out Clavadel and getting her ready for fieldwork. We also took the time to rest for a bit. That same day, at the end of the evening, the next two volunteers would be arriving. At around 2200 they arrived with just some small bags and a couple of sleeping bags. As soon as they arrived I quickly introduced them to the boat, showed them the boat quarters and let them decide where they would sleep. As soon as they arrived it was clear I was facing two very enthusiastic people and extremely interested in the work, as we spent quite a while talking about the project an its scientific implications. Our conversation had to wait though, as it was already late and we had to get up early the next day to go to fuel and get us going out to sea and try and identify the area were dolphins usually hang around.

So, next day we started with our new crew, Paulo Serrano and João Dias. Paulo and João both heard of this project through the NGO Vertigem who advertised volunteer positions for this project.

Paulo Serrano


João Dias

However, our hopes of starting early the next day were soon shattered. Apparently, there is no fuel available on Tuesdays!!! Fortunately, some marina workers borrowed us two 25 litres bottles to go to the next petrol station to get some diesel we could use for the day. While we were doing this, Paulo started talking to one of the workers who's a former fisherman. He confirmed the information we had from a friend of Zé that dolphins could be found at around 4-6 miles from coast and were apparently very common. He said though, that we would have problems approaching them because it was an area that fishermen constantly used. Paulo eventually was able to get the information that whenever they could, fishermen would "wrap" dolphins, that being the reason they were suspicious. At this time we could not confirm the veracity of this, so we just decided to go out to the position we had and wait to see.

We finally leave port and set course to around 6 miles offshore slightly to the North of Porto. Our plan was to scout transects parallel to the coast, at different distances from the coast. The sky was bit cloudy, but the sea was very calm. To my surprise though, we didn't really need to do much searching. Even before we got to our first transect, we found dolphins without even needing to look for them!!! After looking at them and taking some pictures, me, 1st mate and Paulo got into the dingy to start sampling.



However, as we approached the group (that was feeding at this point) most of the group just fled as fast as they could (in the case of commons this means REALLY fast!!!). Even with our light and fast dingy, we could never follow them so we stayed with the few that kept feeding. However, as soon as they were finished feeding, they did the exact same thing as the others, just swam for it! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. In no time, they were gone! We kept looking, but we never really found any more dolphins that day. At least we knew the position we had was reliable to some extent.

The next day, a surprise awaited us. As we were getting ready to leave out to sea we saw the lonely bottlenose wandering around the boats. As we wasn't leaving I decided to get into the dingy and get a bit closer. To my surprise I realised it had a strange fondness for propellers, and would swim really close if the boat was moving, and when stopped it would just rub gently against it. Even at increased speeds he would swim really close to the propeller almost as if unaware of the danger. He didn't react that well to touch though, and would avoid my hand if it could.


The day was getting late though, and we had to leave to carry on our work. Our time was limited because we had to be back by 1700 to catch the fuel pier still open. We quickly found the dolphins and got into the dingy, but again sampling proved really hard. We followed the group waiting to get a chance, but in addition to the group being wary, we realized that pretty much every adult had a small calf following it. Some of them were so small, I would say they were just a few days old. Soon it was time to head back, and although we didn't have any samples, we were now more confident that we had identified the area that dolphins normally use.

On the third day we finally got our first samples. Three in total... not brilliant but not bad as well. The sea had some high but long waves that did not impair sampling but made it a bit more susceptible to seasickness. In on of the samples, the dart bounced of the dolphin and came close enough to the dingy so that I was able to catch it before it hit the water. The rest of the week wasn't so successful though and in the end we had only 4 samples. I was realizing that sampling in Porto was going to be much tougher than in the South. Even though we saw many dolphins, their shy behaviour would make it a whole different matter.


1st mate eventually had to leave, and so did João and Paulo. After 5 days in Porto we had identified the are were we could find dolphins and got 4 samples in total. Not bad for a region were we knew pretty much nothing except some coordinates by random people. As for the next days we just had to try as much as we could to increase the total number of samples.

Thanks to Paulo Serrano for letting me use some of his pictures in this blog.