INFORMATION FOR VOLUNTEERS
ACHIEVEMENTS 1998
The computer systems and technical equipment had been lost courtesy of British Airways and Iberia; Roni, our computer expert specially brought in was sight seeing as we waited for the internet site, and equipment, to come on-line; no scanners, no printers, no database, and running out of time
When we commenced the programme on July 7th of this year, we could not have had a more difficult start. The building work which had been scheduled to finish at the end of May had barely been started when the co-ordinator team arrived just over a week before the start of the programme. They had come to get ready, to familiarise themselves with the Island, to get to know each other, to do some 'cosmetic' work on La Hidalga. They ended up on a building site, carrying 2000 loads of cement, sand and stone from a hill top to where it was needed. They had to learn to make concrete, lay bricks, render. They had to paint and to landscape and they had to do this 18 hours a day for ten days- groundhog day style, but without the fun. In the end, the first volunteers arriving on the 7th had to help get ready for the ones arriving that evening.
Nothing ready: no vans, we had to compromise on cars; no T shirts, the supplier later professed to have been injured in a car crash and unable to complete the contact but was subsequently seen running away from an irate Proyecto leader; no cupboards; no hot water, the second shower block had a bamboo roll unfurled on it to create a roof!; no poster, the corner stone of our 'raising awareness' campaign was consumed in confusion as to how it was going to be paid for.......
What happened in the following weeks will go down as testament to the capacity of people to achieve against all the odds. The following list is a selection of all that happened as a result of the hundreds of volunteers and coordinators that put in so much effort over the course of the summer.
Well over two hundred volunteers went through the projects. Almost without exception, all left with intense knowledge, extraordinary achievements, and a commitment to the projects and its way of working. It is hard to overstate the goodwill generated. This was the first year we had taken recruits through the European Ecovolunteer agency and the inclusion of Dutch, French, German, Swedish, Israeli.....participants has made an enormous improvement to the project's performance, particularly in our guiding role where the language skills have ensured the boats have clamoured to have us on board throughout the summer.
The guide service proved particularly effective with boats currently fighting with each other to take guides on board now numbers have fallen. The language skills, the free poster, the photo identification material developed by the research teams and designed to complement our existing didactic materials, have played their part but, as always, the indomitable and sheer enthusiasm of the guides has been instrumental in this success.
Training programmes were initiated and subsequently articulated covering a diverse range of activities, from volunteer induction to presentations specially designed for such as businesses and the local unemployed, through to educational workshops on the Gomera ferry. So articulate were these programes, which included video and slide materials, that local Canarians are now using them with confidence.
The first wave of volunteers went down to the boats on the 13th July. That first week they overran Los Cristianos working on all the boats and by the end of the following week had penetrated and overran Playa de Las Americas, working on most of the boats including those previously hostile to the projects. By the following week we were in the third port of Los Gigantes for the first time ever. New boats included the luxurious Lady Shelley, Nashira and Katrin operations in Los Gigantes and such as the Lupe and Bonadea 11 in Playa.
By the second week we had managed to cobble together finances to produce the first tranche of 100,000 posters to be given free to tourists. They were an immediate success. Each volunteer has been on a mission to make one tourist a day commit to doing something, a total of 2500 Europeans over the course of the summer going back enthused. As the second tranche goes to print we have almost al the main boats on board so achieving one of our core objectives of getting the industry to see itself as that, an industry and, here in London, we are starting to get a wave of enquiries from the posters given out. This project also enabled useful cooperation between us and such as the Environmental Investigation Agency, Greenpeace and WDCS.
The Festival of the Whale was launched with the improbable ambition of creating a sense of festival, that Tenerife was a place to go and 'celebrate' the whale and nature. We developed special beach activities, having first to get the necessary permits to prevent us from being dragged off the beaches by the civil guard. To create whale and dolphin themed activities that would engage children speaking a range of languages proved a hard nut to crack but at the second attempt we were able to initiate beach sculpting competitions, face painting, amazing poster art work with all the children contributing to a tapestry, a concept that we have relaunched as a whale tapestry that will draw on contributions from children from all over the world.
We arranged fun quizzes and whale nights in bars, (the performance of volunteers in getting an audience of hundreds participating in our games was extraordinary), and themed menus in restaurants, pancakes cafes, pizza huts, ice creams parlours....; the Metropolis disco attracted thousands of people for an all night beach disco that reverberated to the images of whales and dolphins interspersed with flashes of threats and a background theme of 'save the whale' 'save the whale' save the whale'.
The Festival also saw the Island's first ever Educational Whale Watch. This was on board the early morning sailing of the Tropical Delfin and was aimed at families offering, as it did, an educational experience for children. All including the crew, had to dress in dolphin hats and wear blue peter style badges. These trips will become an integral aspect of whale watching in the Canaries. Elsewhere throughout the Festival we put on an exhibition in the cultural centre of Los Cristianos, mounted public talks on cetacean issues, gave radio talks, decorated everywhere with blue and white bunting..........
Horace Dobbs and Shizuko Ouwehand were the best known of the guests that included representatives from the EIA and Born Free Foundation and who all came to participate in and contribute to the celebrations. Shizuko, as always, attracted an enormous following. Horace Dobbs' organisation, International Dolphin Watch, is to promote the dolphin adoption scheme, probably Pedro, on the basis of the monies going into programmes to take special needs groups to Los Gigantes to visit the dolphins there and to receive therapeutic sessions.
The Festival also saw the launch of a brand new initiative aimed at getting the boats helping in raising the awareness of young Tenerifans to the whales and of their responsibility for their welfare. Several of the operators- the Freebird, Lady Shelley, Tropical Delfin, Katrin...contributed in taking hundreds of local children for special whale watch trips and our aim is to create one thousand such opportunities with the adoption scheme and workshops thrown in so as to bring about a sense of ownership and responsibility. We are currently developing a number of specialist whalewatching 'products' with a number of these boats.
Press coverage in the English and Spanish press was relentless, articles and full page editions in all papers throughout the summer. At the end of July we launched Tenerife's first whale watching newspaper, the Whale and Dolphin Times!!, now in its sixth issue and covering global conservation and whale watching as well as developments in the industry. Along with the media coverage, the profile of the projects has increased enormously, so much so that we had regular visits from the Ministry of Environment and much cooperation from local politicians. We even are now on first name terms with the chief of the Civil Guard!
We have our very own Whale and Dolphin Adoption Scheme based around a CD Rom detailing research results, conservation issues and promoting Tenerife. The logo created for this is truly special and the scheme will help put the projects on an even financial keel as well as create a powerful European wide grassroots structure and the means through which we can send out regular newsletters both to Europeans and local Canarians.
The Web Site is extraordinary, created by our very own web master. See for yourself on - http://www.interbook.net/personal/delfinc/
La Hidalga improvements are wonderful. We now have a fully equipped lecture room/ resource centre- possibly the most actively used facility in the world with lights often burning through the night. We have a second shower block, extra bedrooms, landscaped grounds, over fifty beds and almost enough room for them all, an enormous sun terrace nicknamed the bastard terrace by the coordinators who built it, landscaped interior etc etc......
Towards the end of August, and after countless meetings, we were asked by Canarian unemployed youth on a course in los Cristianos: 'How many Canarians are working on the boats with you?' 'None' came the indignant and equally Canarian reply' 'Wrong..there are forty' And with this came the greatest of the summer's successes with all forty unemployed being put through our research and guide training programmes through specially designed training modules developed and implemented by volunteers. Some will stick after their on board practical experience and work on the boats through the winter, going on to train next year's incoming volunteers in turn.
On the research front, we increased the number of pilot whales identified by over one hundred in the first six weeks, all named at the naming ceremony put on at the end of August. We have started behavioural work to put character profiles to these names. In Los Gigantes, we identified, and had named, all six dolphins regularly seen throughout the summer and were able, in the process, to build up strong character profiles. When the fishermen named two Luky and Pedro they created a base for scandal as these are the animals most often seen in sexual embrace!
The researchers did far more than this in that they managed to involve the crews, guides and tourists into what they were doing. The lap top displays bringing up information on the pilot whales excited all as did use of GPS monitoring equipment and high technology camera and cam corder equipment. Several experienced guides and captains were sufficiently motivated to come to La Hidaga and talk to us of their experiences, a project first.
Out of this year's research work, we have developed a range of new initiatives, from pollution and acoustic programmes designed to compliment the photo identification and behavioural work through to a programme to anaylse the psychological and therapeutic effect of watching whales and dolphins. We are in the process of creating a new vehicle to assist in coordinating cetacean activities to be called the 'Atlantic Whale Foundation'.
The Management Survey based on statistical data collected last summer was particularly well received and a new, upgraded customer survey is currently being conducted. This will form the basis of regular annual research. and provide invaluable information to the boats on ways in which they can improve themselves.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of this summer is still to be felt. The Arafo office of Proyecto Ambiental Tenerife is currently inundated with the requests from local Canarians to get involved, to do something. Public meetings and presentations are going ahead now and it is hard to see how this ground swell of opinion and support will not develop into massive Canarian presence on the projects from now on. Waves of European volunteers have come through the projects over the years and crashed idealistically on seas of indifference and contempt but never given in and, finally, there are appearing amazing breakthroughs all across our spheres of operation.
Thanks all to the co-ordinators who have worked throughout the summer and helped to make all the above possible: Phil Brindley; Vayu Robins; Boyana; Natasha; Masha Chodweiser- Bonne; Giles Aspinall; Marian Hoffman; Sarah Hambrook; Susan Glock Alan Please; Dan Nussey and Julia Baker.