As our research season draws to a close and the team is readying SOTW for the passage back to Ipswich, we look back at the last few months surveying the Eastern Mediterranean. Bow-riding pilot and false-killer whales, breaching fin whales, phosphorescent dolphin tracks, the first live free-swimming porpoises seen in the Northern Aegean Sea since the 1990s, and the first live porpoises ever documented in Turkish Aegean waters, finless bottlenose dolphins, jumping swordfish, new born dolphin calves with foetal folds, mixed dolphin species groups, turtles resting at the surface, a brief sighting of an endangered Mediterranean Monk Seal and countless flying fish were just a few of the highlights. However there were also many challenges including the rapid weather changes in the Northern Aegean, a short-lived fly infestation, the extreme heat, the many goodbyes with changing crew members, many days without any sightings and challenges with permits.
The final weeks of survey around southern Cyprus continued to present surprising and interesting sightings. We picked up a new addition to our crew, Melina Markou, a local Cypriot scientist from the Ministry of the Environment and headed off to cover our planned transects across southern Cyprus and the Eratosthenes Seamount, a proposed CIESM peace park. This area of the Eastern Mediterranean has received very little previous systematic survey effort so we were excited to be able to provide some much needed survey effort. The sightings were few and far between over the next two weeks of survey, which was somewhat expected due to the Eastern Mediterranean having lower levels of primary productivity than the western basin. The hydrophones were much quieter than they had been in the Aegean Sea, mostly filled with the sounds of passing vessels and in some areas very loud seismic pulses and the crew were getting frustrated. Two days into the survey however we had an incredible encounter with a mixed group of rough-toothed and Risso’s dolphins bowriding and milling around the SOTW. Rough-toothed dolphins, a species which was new to all of the team on board, have been documented only a few times in the Eastern Mediterranean, having originally been thought to be an immigrant to the Mediterranean from the Suez Canal, but are now thought to be resident in small numbers in this area. They spent around 40 minutes around the vessel and so we managed to document them through photographic identification images, underwater video and recorded some of their interesting octave-stepping whistles. Later in the week we also had brief sightings of more rough-toothed dolphins, false killer whales and a Mediterranean Monk seal.
Unfortunately, our survey around Cyprus was cut short. Just a few days before the end of our planned survey we developed an engine problem and all survey equipment needed to be turned off as we sailed back to harbour . After a few days in port, many phone calls and a hand-delivered engine part arriving with Andy, Mat our engineer’s brother, the engine was repaired, but only in time for a quick passage back to Rhodes and our final crew change.