Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean Marine Mammals: From Tarifa to Sanremo

Before pointing Pontoporia’s bow east again towards home, I made a brief foray into the Atlantic Ocean in the hope of encountering orcas. A successive conversation with local experts convinced me that having missed them on that day was a lucky circumstance—orcas in the area had been involved recently in unfriendly interactions with over 500 vessels similar to mine. Leaving Tarifa and heading east along the coast of Andalusia, I ran into a good-sized school of pilot whales before proceeding towards my destination along the south coast of the Balearic Islands. Off the slope south of Menorca, after encountering a group of sperm whale bachelors busy catching mid-water squid, I headed into the deep waters comprised between the European continent and Corsica, finally treated to an encounter with the gentle, majestic fin whales—an encounter I had been looking forward to since the day I left my moorings in Venice. Further ahead, I crossed the western boundary of the Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean marine mammals, the world’s first high-seas marine protected area created by an international agreement as a result of my initiative. But as I went through the waters nominally protected by the treaty, I had strong reasons for thinking that the whales needed more than just paper protection to improve their condition and survive in the Mediterranean Sea.