The Ischia dolphin and whale conservation project is one that made my dreams come true; not only because of the impact in its field but also because we’ve had such a lovely crew and saw a lot of gorgeous things (including dolphins and tuna). This research has been going on for so long that it has caused to make the waters around Ischia a more protected area. The project exceeded my expectations by far.
The Jean Gab is a beautiful sailing boat and Angelo (the captain) is an amazing cook. Everyone has to do some daily chores such as washing the dishes, vacuuming, cleaning etc. but that was also quite nice. Quite a lot of friends from Angelo came over to the boat, making the ambiance even more amazing than it already was because we’ve had such a lovely crew.
It was nice to see how everyone worked together and where almost always doing different things: i.e. some people where looking out for the dolphins while some other where looking at the spectrogram to see if there are any dolphins or whales near, and because of that I feel like I have definitely made a difference to the project. It’s important to stay very patient when you’re out sailing for a long time because you don’t know if you’ll be seeing dolphins or any other sea animal at all: nature doesn’t wait for you.
The one (and only) day we’ve finally got to see dolphins was by far a dream come true; a pod of striped dolphins came very close to the boat and they were truly beautiful. The rest of the days we’ve seen a couple of tunas and that was of course also very amazing.