Here are the impressions of one of the volunteers – Teodora Ilieva: “Sea, sun, wind and… dolphins! Playful, curious, a little shy. Extraordinary inspiring experience, which made me think once again of the role and responsibility of the human as part of the world and nature. And of course – the gratification from contributing with something for these wonderful animals is incomparable. I am grateful to all who shared this with me”.
At the time of the research, the participants registered a total of 67 observations of cetaceans, most numerous being the harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena), followed by bottlenose dolphin, and only one observation of common dolphin (Delphinus delphis).
A number of rare and interesting bird species were also observed at sea, as Yelkouan shearwaters (Puffinus yelkouan), black-legged kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla), pied wheatear (Oenanthe pleschanka), and common shag (Phalacrocorax aristotelis).
Collecting of data about the distribution and number of cetaceans is itself of exceptional importance for the protection of cetaceans. In order that data to be collected, experts and volunteers have to be trained, who would provide data for the National System for Monitoring of Biological Diversity, which is the goal of our project.