03.10.2018 – Message in a bottle

We have seen Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) on all our tours today. It´s always impressive when these large dolphins come close to the boat giving us the chance to get a close look. In addition to those lovely sightings, a remarkable finding out on the ocean has been another highlight of the day.

We didn´t only take several pieces of trash out of the water, one bottle turned out to contain a message. It was properly sealed but we could see the letter through the green glass. As there was no way to get the note out on sea, we opened the bottle back in the marina.

The letter was sent by the Ukrainian seaman and marine biologist Yurey Lyashenko who is currently staying in Qatar but travels a lot over the oceans of the world. Since 2009 he sent 220 messages through the Mediterranean, the Black and the Baltic Sea as well as the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. We received his letter number 213. It has been thrown into the Bay of Biscay on the 26^thof May this year. After an incredible journey of more than 1800 kilometers through the Eastern Atlantic Ocean we picked it up at 11 am on the 3^rd of October four miles South of Calheta. Some little Goose barnacles (Pollicipes pollicipes) on the outside of the bottle indicated already that the message has been in the water for quite a while.

It must have been drifting southward with the Azores Current. It took 131 days for the bottle to make it out of the Bay of Biscay, passing along the Spanish and Portuguese coast before moving out to the open Atlantic Ocean and finally arriving in the South of Madeira. “An interesting result, but not unexpected”, that’s how the writer of the message summarized the journey of his letter No. 213.

Note: There is added pictures, courtesy of our client Petar Beres 🙂 Many thanks 😉

by Jan-Christopher Fischer

Sightings of the day

Ribeira Brava

10:00 Bottlenose dolphins

Stenella

10:00 Bottlenose dolphins

15:00 Bottlenose dolphins, Loggerhead turtles