Across the islands with a dead dolphin 

- A day out and about with the Fundación Palma Aquarium

Palma is still asleep when I board the number 35 bus at Plaza España at around five in the morning. The bus drives down the Avenidas to the sea, where a few anglers are trying their luck in the dark water at Playa Can Pere Antoni. There are only two other passengers dozing along with me and as we pass the port of Portixol, I close my eyes for a moment. I get off at the last stop at Playa de Can Pastilla and cross the empty road. It is still quiet outside, the only sound coming from a plane taking off, the Aeropuerto de Palma de Mallorca is only 2 kilometers away as the crow flies.

At the Palma Aquarium, Lluc is waiting for me in front of the hidden iron door to the left of the main entrance. She is one of the three permanent biologists employed by the non-profit organization Fundación Palma Aquarium (FPA), which works to protect the marine environment on the Balearic Islands. The foundation is the official point of contact for the rescue and care of protected marine animals such as turtles, sharks and whales on the Balearic Islands and regularly organizes events to promote environmental awareness among the population. At the same time, the institution researches the effects of climate change and human intervention on the Mediterranean ecosystem.

Lluc greets me with a beaming smile. The Mallorcan woman is in her mid-20s, small and petite, with dark eyes and hair and a firm handshake. “Thank you for being here. It's really great that you're helping all day today!” she says enthusiastically as we walk down the stairs. The Fundación is located under the aquarium, in a corner of the parking garage. This is where the tanks are kept in which the rescued sea turtles are nursed back to health so that they can be released back into the sea. A team of around 20 volunteers take turns helping the biologists to care for the animals.

Another task awaits Lluc and me today: a hotel on Menorca has booked the foundation for a beach clean-up and we will be taking the ferry to the neighbouring island in Alcudia at 8:30 a.m. in the organization's van.

About 30 people are expected and so we pack enough gloves, garbage grabbers and garbage bags in a lockable plastic box. We also pack lists to categorize the garbage collected, pens and portable scales. The foldable camping table and illustrative material such as a plastic turtle caught in a fishing net and various information brochures are also included. 

The sun rises on the drive to Alcudia and we are rewarded for getting up early on Saturday with a wonderful display of colors in the sky.

As the ferry departs for Ciutadella, we look for seats on the communal deck. The Foundation has covered the cost of the crossing, but we have to pay for our own food. I invite Lluc for a coffee and she tells me that you can sometimes spot dolphins on the crossing, but unfortunately we're not lucky today.

 After a 75-minute boat ride, we arrive on Menorca.
Today's destination is the beach at S'Algar, so we still have to cross the entire island from west to east. It's April and green meadows pass us by on the 55 km drive. As we drive along the ME1 towards Mahon, Lluc explains to me the impact that garbage has on our environment. She will give a short presentation on this before we start picking up litter on the beach to raise awareness among the participants. I am supposed to do the English version and so I listen intently to her explanations: “We only see 15% of the waste in the sea, because 85% is on the seabed. Of all this waste, 85% comes from the land. Kilometer zero is the sewage and the toilet. This is where many people still throw their wet wipes, diapers, sanitary towels or earwash.

I search my mind for the English word for cotton swab while Lluc continues: “Of the more than 400 million tons of plastic waste, 40% is plastic packaging and 25% comes from the textile industry. Here people can make a direct contribution by using less and recycling more.

There are now six garbage islands in the oceans, the largest of which is located between Hawaii and California and covers an area of 1.6 million square kilometers.

In other words, this garbage island alone is 3.5 times the size of Spain. And it's 40 m deep. 8 million tons of waste are dumped into the sea every year worldwide, which equates to around 250 kg per second. Imagine that, EVERY second!!! It is estimated that at this rate there will be more waste than species in the ocean by 2050.”

All these figures make me feel dizzy and we almost missed the exit onto the ME 8 towards San Luis. We are almost there and Lluc contacts Maria, her contact at the hotel. As we are bringing a lot of equipment with us, we park the van right on the palm-lined promenade by the beach.

S'Algar is a small vacation resort in the south-east of Menorca, situated on a rocky coastline. As a result, there are few sandy areas and concrete platforms have been built instead as sunbathing and swimming areas. Nevertheless, S'Algar is an important tourist center for the island. The water is crystal clear, but the beach area of around 100 meters is much smaller than I had imagined.

Maria has asked Lluc to pick up the group of participants directly at the hotel, so I stay alone on the promenade and set up the information stand here. It's almost noon by now, but there are only a few people out and about and most of them keep their distance. Only a couple of British pensioners look at the brochures and let me explain the study that the Fundación Palma Aquarium (FPA) conducted together with the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). According to the study, 60% of the so-called Caretta Caretta (loggerhead turtles) found dead or alive on the coasts of the Balearic Islands contain plastics in their stomachs. Many die of intestinal obstruction.

The tortugas bobas, as they are called in Spanish, are a highly migratory sea turtle species and are considered globally endangered according to the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The carapace of the loggerhead turtle can grow up to 120 cm long and can reach a weight of up to 110 kg. Sea turtles existed long before humans, and their species is one of the most ancient species that populated the earth with the dinosaurs. Undisturbed by humans, sea turtles can live for over 100 years. When you consider that they have been on this planet for 110 million years, you can understand the fascination for this species.

When sea turtles strand on the Balearic Islands, the biggest problem is the ghost fishing nets made of polyethylene and polyester.
The animals become entangled in the nets and often lose one of their flippers as a consequence. If you discover a sea turtle washed up on the beach, please never try to free the animal from the nets yourself. Instead, please call 112 and let the experts rescue the animals. Signs with instructions are posted on all beaches on the Balearic Islands.

Lluc returns to the beach with a group of 4 men and 2 women, which is just a fifth of the expected number of participants. The hotel offers beach cleaning as a voluntary activity for its employees and guests and can thus present itself as an environmentally conscious company. The entertainment manager Juan and his colleague Rocio are on duty, Marina from reception has already finished work and is taking part out of conviction. The three other men are red-burnt British hotel guests in their fifties. They would rather do something for the environment than continue hanging out by the pool.

Lluc begins her presentation professionally and I translate her remarks into English. The midday sun is beating down on our heads and the group's attention fizzles out after about 5 minutes. Lluc responds and we start the active part straight away. Everyone is given a sponsored T-shirt to wear and then Lluc divides the group into 3 teams. One person collects the garbage in each team and the other classifies it on the lists they have brought with them. The team with the most garbage at the end of the beach clean-up wins. The British in particular enjoy the competitive element.

They are three friends who Lluc has strategically placed in three different teams. But that doesn't stop them from shouting something at each other during the collection. “Fuck mate, did you smoke all this shit without any ashtree yesterday?” Brian laughs at his buddy James and shows Lluc that he has just found a pile of over 20 fags at once.
Lluc immediately takes the opportunity to explain to everyone present: “Cigarette butts are one of the biggest sins of litter in nature worldwide. Humanity produces more than 6 billion tons of them every year, 4.5 billion of which end up in nature.
 
Every single cigarette butt can pollute 50 liters of water because it contains the toxins cadmium, arsenic, nicotine and toluene. 
Smoking therefore not only damages our health, but also the environment.

The cigarette filters are made from cellulose acetate. This is a thermoplastic that releases its pollutants, mainly hydrocarbons, into the environment and has a harmful effect for 10 years.”

Now even Brian gets serious and collects everything he finds even more diligently.

After about an hour, the air is out and the beach section is largely clean.

The teams have collected and categorized a total of almost 12 kg of garbage, including 156 lollipop sticks and 109 plastic screw caps. So it makes sense that

Since July 2024, the screw caps must be firmly attached to the beverage container. The new rule is intended to prevent the large numbers of separated caps and lids from continuing to end up in the environment.

The participants cheerfully load the full bin bags into the foundation's van and make their way back to the hotel on foot. Lluc and I take the van to the back of the hotel and dispose of the waste in the bins, separating it into plastic and residual waste.

We are then invited to have lunch at the hotel. We find a shady spot on the inviting terrace with a view of the sea.

Spooning up gazpacho, Lluc explains the problem of microplastics in the water. It leads to biomagnification, which means nothing other than the accumulation of pollutants in the food chain. 

The higher an animal is in the food chain, the more toxins accumulate in its body. As we humans are often at the bottom of the food chain, we end up eating our own garbage and gradually poisoning ourselves.

We are having dessert with crema catalana when Lluc's cell phone rings.

It's Xisca, the coordinator of the Balearic Islands' stranded marine life network (OCEMIB).

Fishermen have reported that a dead dolphin with a large wound on its belly is drifting off the north coast of Menorca.
In June 2014, the Palma Aquarium Foundation signed a technical assistance contract with the COFIB (animal rescue) and the Conselleria de Medio Ambiente (Ministry of the Environment) and has since become the official recovery center for the Balearic Islands' marine fauna. The Fundación Palma Aquarium is not only responsible for the care of the sea turtles stranded on the Balearic Islands, but also for coordinating the work teams on Mallorca, Ibiza, Formentera and Menorca when whales and dolphins strand dead or alive on the coasts of the Balearic Islands.

As we are already on Menorca, we are given the task of recovering the dead dolphin and taking it to the Palma Aquarium for an autopsy. It's not often that an animal washes up so fresh that this is possible. 

Usually, the biologists or volunteers only go to the site to take photos and take the mass of stranded marine mammals for research purposes before they are disposed of by employees of the Medio Ambiente.

So we make our way to Ses Salines while the fishermen take the carcass of the dolphin in tow to take it to the bay of Fornells. Lluc asks me to drive the van so that she can organize the recovery on her cell phone in contact with the fishermen and the local environmental protection officer.

When we arrive in Ses Salines at Platja Redonda, the Med Ambient agent is already waiting for us in his olive green uniform in front of a jeep. He introduces himself as Felipe and is around 30, bearded and strongly built.

Then the small fishing boat approaches the coast and Felipe takes over.

The dead dolphin is pulled over a jetty into the shallow water of a boat ramp. One of the two fishermen also jumps ashore and wants to help us retrieve the carcass. He is wearing long dark blue all-weather clothing and a dark blue cap. His name is Xavi and he tells us that the fishermen in the area have recently seen a mako shark at sea. He speculates that the spotted mako shark could have caused the dolphin's injury. Lluc is not particularly convinced by this theory and wants to wait for the autopsy.

Mako sharks inhabit all the world's oceans, but are now highly endangered due to overfishing.
They belong to the genus of mackerel sharks and have a shiny blue-metallic coloration. They can grow up to 4 meters long and weigh 500 kg. Due to their special tooth-like scales, these sharks are extremely agile and fast, reaching a top speed of over 70 km per hour. Makos are very intelligent with a large brain-to-body ratio and are considered dangerous deep-sea predators. Fortunately, humans are not among their prey.

Felipe decides to drag the dolphin to the open hold of our van with the winch of his jeep and attaches the steel cable to its fluke. But when he pulls the carcass ashore, all the intestines spill out of the dead animal and the tail fin threatens to tear off. The action has to be stopped and instead we roll backwards with the transporter even closer to the dead marine mammal. Wearing gloves, Lluc tries to push the intestines back into the animal's abdomen as best he can. The dolphin's body is far too heavy for us. It is a bottlenose dolphin that is about 2 meters long and certainly weighs over 200 kg. The television series Flipper has made this dolphin species world-famous and bottlenose dolphins are also usually kept in dolphinaria.

 They belong to the toothed whale family and can grow up to 4 meters long and weigh an average of 400 kg.

There is a sense of helplessness until Felipe suddenly has an idea. There is a building site nearby and he goes there to ask for help and is actually successful. A tanned digger driver with gray, frizzy curls and a full beard drives up with his construction machine and takes a look at the situation. He is a real man of action and doesn't waste time with a lot of chatter. He starts the engine again and gives us brief and precise instructions as he lifts the dolphin with his excavator shovel. When the gray body mass is actually stowed crosswise in the transporter, he shakes our thanks with just a short “Sin problema, suerte con eso.” (No problem, good luck with it.). We ask him for a team photo, but he doesn't take off his dark mirrored sunglasses and then drives straight back to his pit. We didn't get his name.

Lluc and I also have to leave as quickly as possible, because the ferry back to Mallorca won't be waiting for us. We say goodbye to Felipe and Xavi and drive back to the ferry port in Ciutadella as quickly as possible with the windows open.
Even though the porpoise has only been dead for a few hours, it already stinks terribly and we are accompanied by a horde of flies on its open wound.

I'm at the wheel again, because Lluc has to organize our arrival at Palma Aquarium. The two of us alone can't possibly lift the dead body out of the van and the car has to be ready for use again tomorrow morning.

When the ferry is back on its way to Alcudia with us, we are relieved to be able to escape the stench in the van for a while.

It is already dusk again when we finally get back to the aquarium. Marco, another biologist employed by the FPA with Italian blood and temperament, is already waiting for us. It's actually his day off, but he's not leaving us hanging and has also alerted Gonzalo the night watchman, because we need all the help we can get to get the dead animal from the hold onto the post-mortem stretcher. Marco has prepared white full-body protective suits, rubber boots and plastic gloves for all of us and when we're fully dressed, we look like the forensic investigators in the TV crime dramas.

Although the four of us summon up all our strength, the heavy body doesn't move a bit out of the hold. It's desperate, but giving up is not an option and we have to find a solution. As a child in Zandvoort, I once saw a live stranded dolphin being rescued with a stretcher and carried away from the beach. “Don't you have something like that here?” I ask, exhausted. “Clarooo!”

Marco hits his forehead with the flat of his hand and disappears briefly into the garage. Then he comes back with the stretcher and after much more effort we finally make it and the dead mammal lies on the autopsy table. 
Now we have to disinfect the van with Lejia (bleach containing chlorine), wash it out and clear away all the materials from the beach clean-up.

When everything is done, we say a warm goodbye and Lluc offers me a lift back to Palma in her car. I gratefully agree, as I don't feel like getting on the bus all sweaty and smelling of fish. When she drops me off at Plaza España, the terraces are already packed with night owls.

I almost forget that it's Saturday, but I'm far too tired to go out.

Incidentally, the autopsy the next day revealed that an engine propeller was the cause of the young dolphin's death.

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