Corinth canal to Athens

After leaving the Pelagos sanctuary, we sailed south through the Straits of Messina – between Sicily and mainland Italy – then onto the Ionian Greek island of Kefalonia to clear Customs. Here we also sampled ‘imam’ – an amazing aubergine based tomato dish, and carried out maintenance on Song of the Whale (while enjoying the company of the harbour’s resident turtle). En route to Athens, we passed through the famous Corinth canal.

The ancient Greeks used to drag their ships across a road at this point, a shortcut between the Ionian and Aegean Seas. Various emperors throughout history attempted to build the canal but it wasn’t completed until the 1890’s. It’s quite an amazing trip, with its high gorge-like sides and milky blue waters. Shortly after leaving the canal we arrived in the port of Piraeus, near Athens, to pick up the rest of the participants for the survey of the very Northern Aegean, primarily for harbour porpoises.  Our study will be the first time the Thracian Sea has been systematically surveyed for harbour porpoises, and we’ll be using a combination of visual observations and hydrophones (underwater microphones) and with the aim of investigating harbour porpoise distribution and abundance in this area. Previous research in this area has been limited to just two live sightings and numerous strandings around the Greek and Turkish coastline.  Joining the team for the survey are Alexiadou Paraskevi from Greece’s Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, Ekrem Hacioglu from the Turkish Government’s Department of Marine Research and Macit Ege Ercan from the Turkish Marine Research Foundation.