At the end of Oct 24, ORCA offered me a Wildlife Guide position on the Saga Legends of the Eastern Mediterranean cruise on the Saga ship, Spirit of Adventure. This is the first Saga cruise to have an ORCA team onboard in 2025. It took all of about thirty seconds to confirm I was available. Within a day, I had heard along the grapevine that the team would be led by Karen Griffin and the Wildlife Officer would be Terry Carne. I have surveyed with both Terry & Karen on the Plymouth to Santander route in Mar 24, as well as, travelled with Terry on my previous ORCA Saga survey to the Caribbean in Jan & Feb 24. There was a late substitute of the fourth team member and Lexie Massie joined us on her first ORCA Saga cruise. Lexie has previously worked as an ORCA Ocean Conservationist on the Newcastle to Amsterdam route. It looked to be a good team on paper and that was borne out in practice. I would like to thank Saga cruises for inviting the ORCA team on board and the ORCA office team for offering me the opportunity to be part of the team.
Roll forward about eleven weeks and we were meeting up at the Portsmouth cruise terminal. Once we were all there, Karen contacted Lucy Babey who popped over from the nearby ORCA office, to bring us the survey equipment. It was good to see and have a chat with Lucy again, before we headed off to check in. We were quickly checked in and boarding the ship. After finding the cabins, it was time for lunch.
After a late lunch, we had a quick look around the Spirit of Adventure. She is the sister ship of the Spirit of Discovery, that I was on for the Caribbean Calypso cruise in 2024. Apart from differences in decor, I couldn't see a lot of difference between the two ships. Around mid-afternoon, we had the mandatory safety drill. This was followed by a meeting with the Cruise Director Paul, who manages the entertainment team. The ORCA survey team were part of the entertainment team for the cruise, but fortunately, we weren't expected to sing or dance during the cruise.
It was a pre-dawn breakfast on our first morning at sea. This set the pattern for the next few days, until we were far enough East in the Mediterranean, to get an hour or ninety minutes of surveying in, before we headed off to breakfast. After breakfast, we were on deck to start our surveying for dawn. The ship passed the Brittany Peninsula around 06:00 and the day was spent well outside the Bay of Biscay as we headed South.
It was good to see a Bottlenose Dolphin and a pod of twelve Short-beaked Common Dolphins, including one calf, on our first morning. We met the first of the passengers on the top deck, many of which were to become regular visitors while we were at sea. Some of the passengers confirmed that they had booked on this specific cruise, as they knew there was an ORCA team onboard. This was encouraging to hear and it was great to know that these passengers really appreciated our presence on the cruise. While it may seem that this is a great holiday for the ORCA team, the reality is very different. We are on the ship to survey for Cetaceans from dawn to dusk, excluding meal breaks, to provide good passenger engagement, to help the passengers get to know more about the Cetaceans, Birds and other Wildlife that we are encountering and hopefully to show the passengers some Whales and Dolphins.
The first half of the afternoon was quiet, with no more Cetaceans seen. Mid-afternoon we headed down to the lecture theatre where Terry was giving his first talk to the passengers about the ORCA surveying and how this data is used to improve protection for Cetaceans in the UK, Europe and rest of the world. Additionally, he provided information on the species we were hoping to encounter on the trip. Terry also took this opportunity to introduce the rest of the ORCA team to the passengers.
Terry was scheduled to give two talks to the passengers, with the second on the final afternoon. Later in the cruise, Karen ran a Wildlife themed quiz and Terry and I ran a Wildlife clinic, where we answered questions on Cetaceans or anything else of interest to the passengers. We were never off duty and if one of us was late for meals or getting on or off the top deck, it was generally because we had bumped into passengers who were interested in what we were seeing. It had been a good first day at sea.
As our 06:00 alarm woke us on the second morning at sea, we were about twenty-five miles off Cap Finisterre, on the North Spanish coast. Cap Finisterre is about sixty miles South East of La Coruna, which I visited when I was one of the ORCA team on the Saga Caribbean Calypso cruise in Jan- Feb 24. Thanks to the pre-dawn breakfast, we were able to spent the whole day surveying, apart from a break for lunch, as we headed South along the North Spanish and Portuguese coasts. It was one of the most important days of surveying for the entire cruise.
Despite the choppy sea state 4 conditions, in the eight hours and one hundred and forty miles of surveying, we recorded: seven Fin Whales, another seven unidentified Whales (mainly blows), twenty-nine Short-beaked Common Dolphins and two more unidentified Dolphins. Most of the unidentified Whale blows were suspected to be Fin Whales. The presence of significant numbers of Fin Whales off this coastline in January hadn't been known before. However, as the seabed is sharply contoured, albeit the shallower areas were already one mile deep, the ORCA head office team weren't surprised when they heard the news. It was great to feel we had discovered some new information about Fin Whales. When we returned North in February, we surveyed the adjacent part of the coastline in Southern Portugal and again we encountered more Fin Whales. Hopefully, future ORCA teams will be able to gather more data on this region on future cruises.
We were now getting into the rhythm of being of life at sea on our third morning. Another early alarm call and pre-dawn breakfast as we were passing the Lisbon coast, albeit we were still around twenty-five miles offshore. In the seven and a half hours and one hundred and ten miles of surveying, we recorded three unidentified distant Whales and a single Short-beaked Common Dolphin. Additional excitement came, when Terry shouted for a small Wader flying across the bows: it was a Grey Phalarope, which was a nice bonus sighting. Up to this point, I had only seen a scattering of Gannets, Kittiwakes and a few Yellow-legged Gulls from our time at sea. During the day, I missed a Cory's Shearwater and a Fulmar, which passed by when I was surveying on the other side of the ship.
We went to sleep looking forward to the following day when we would have a run ashore to Gibraltar.