Conserving Whales and Dolphins in Tenerife
I spent part of summer this year with a friend working for the Atlantic Whale Foundation, or AWF, in Tenerife. The AWF’s two main aims are to research the behaviour and movement of whale and dolphin species in Canarian waters, and promote awareness of threats to sea life with tourists on the local whale-watching boats.
Having no previous interest in whales and dolphins and also being a psychology student, I was unsure what I would be able to offer in terms of tangible research assistance. However, no mention was made on arrival about each volunteer’s study interests or previous experience working with animals or animal research. We were each encouraged by the leader of the charity to pursue a personal interest if we had one, and as such I was able to develop some research on fish populations and the international problem of overfishing.
The fruit of two weeks reading around the subject allowed me to give a short presentation on my research, talking about some of the risks to fish populations and some of the species that are particularly threatened. This generated a lot of interest amongst the other volunteers, and allowed me to use and develop my previous experience giving presentations in tutorials at university.
During my time in Tenerife, I was able to take part in plenty of leisure activities, either in a small group or as part of the larger group of volunteers. We visited some beautiful beaches in the North East part of the island, where we did some surfing and also camped out for the night. It is often found that in cases where people have come to organisations to volunteer either individually or in twos or threes, activities are usually organised beforehand so nobody is left out of a group and everyone is taken care of. This was something that struck me as particularly special and important about the organisation – although we were free to pursue our interests and generally do as we pleased, the welfare of each volunteer was a concern for every other volunteer and everyone was looked after.
The cost of this excursion was a mere £150 per week. To be perfectly frank, it would be impossible to put a value on this experience. You feel part of an important organisation soon after your arrival at the house, and the time spent on the whale-watching boats talking to people from all over the world all contribute to something that really cannot be matched. We were trained to take photographs of whatever whale or dolphin species we encountered whilst at sea. Working in pairs on each boat trip, one volunteer takes photographs whilst the other catalogues the behaviour of the dolphins; this includes the position relative to the boat, the weather, the GPS co-ordinates, number of adult species and number of younger species. It is not difficult work, and it doesn’t take long to become something of an expert on the subject.
Everyone should feel like this after taking part in volunteer placements abroad. The fact that everyone there is striving towards similar goals and trying to squeeze as much out of their time there whilst doing as much work as possible makes life absolutely fly past. It is very simple to spend two weeks there and wonder where the time went at the end.