Table of Contents
1 Who can join dolphin monitoring in Bulgaria?
2 How many dolphins do live in the Black Sea?
3 What to expect from a dolphin expedition?
4 How to continue learning about dolphins in the Black Sea?
Who can join dolphin monitoring in the Black Sea?
Green Balkans declared November the month of dolphins.
Every month they devote to certain species and educate about them with creative activities, quizzes and games.
Dolphin monitoring in the Black sea is a vessel survey with the application of the internationally used method distance sampling.
It’s a regular scientific project carried out in Bulgaria twice a year since 2017.
The trained team observe transects with binoculars with an in-built compass and record information about spotted species: the type and number of dolphins, coordinates, behaviour and weather conditions.
What’s great about such research is that anyone can participate in it as a volunteer.
How many dolphins do live in the Black Sea?
I learned about such an original project - dolphin monitoring - during my conservation holidays in Pomorie.
The head of the expedition ecologist Dimitar Popov was sharing exciting details of the previous dolphin studies during his talk about cetaceans in the Black sea.
About 200 000 dolphins of three species live in the Black sea.
The scientist also presented a book (in Bulgarian) about their expeditions written together with his colleague and wife Gallinula Meshkova and volunteer Teodora Ilieva.
‘Ideally, all the countries that border the Black Sea should conduct such research simultaneously, - said Dimitar Popov. – But in reality, it’s almost impossible to organize.
There are six international partners: Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, and everyone has different financial and political situations.
What to expect from a dolphin expedition in the Black Sea?
Our November dolphin expedition lasted for one week during which 43 dolphin observations were recorded (in total 200 for 2020).
The first day was devoted to training in Balchick on yacht Kaliakra. We learned how to use the equipment and record data.
Besides me, there were two more volunteers.
Teodora Ilieva (in the image below in the right), a meteorology expert in hailstone from Montana. She began participating in the dolphin expeditions in the Black Sea from the very beginning.
Petya, a teacher from Varna, eagerly supports volunteer projects of great social value that allow learning new things (cleaning beaches from stranded dolphins and supporting participants of mountonous marathons).
Having spent the night on the yacht, we met the sunrise in the open sea.
The working day began at 7 am and finished at 4.30 pm. Each of us was on duty with binoculars for 30 minutes.
In addition to dolphins, we recorded birds. It was quite a tiring and exciting task at the same time.
How to continue learning about dolphins in the Black Sea?
Studies on dolphins in the Black sea are very scarce.
That’s why scientists welcome any public support in observation and recording of encounters with dolphins, both alive and dead.
The special application Black Sea Watch allows everyone to become a social scientist and report any information about dolphins with a mobile phone.
The application is a great database and learning tool at the same time that connects nature lovers and scientists and enables them to exchange information.
It’s really fascinating to develop environmental literacy reporting observations and learning from them!