Parlez with Passengers

A Great Skua cruising over the waves

This week has brought the start of the Easter holidays, and with it, an influx of
passengers on board the Pont Aven. We were very excited to welcome aboard Mark Avery, the celebrated ornithologist, writer and campaigner. He joined Wildlife Officer Andy out on deck and they managed to spot several pods of common dolphins, a couple of whale blows, great skuas, and a fantastic sighting of a migrating osprey as they moved through the Bay of Biscay. Mark Avery has also blogged about his experience aboard Brittany ferries with ORCA and he highlighted the importance of the survey data we collect and The State of European Cetaceans Report that was published earlier this year.  Check out his blog here

 

Wildlife Officer Andy Gilbert (left) with Mark Avery (right)

 

We had some great trips down through the Bay of Biscay for April. It’s really wonderful to share these sightings with passengers, especially when they are so enthusiastic and their patience is rewarded with some lovely sightings. We had one gentleman from Spain who was desperate to see a dolphin, as he had never seen one before in all his sixty nine years. After missing the first few, Andy helped him spot one before the pod disappeared into the distance. His joy was palpable and Andy was rewarded with an ecstatic hug.

Some Common Dolphins clowning around in the Bay of Biscay

We were also accompanied down to Santander this week by the Jones family. It was lovely to meet such an enthusiastic and engaged family and they stayed for the whole of our deck watches. They were well rewarded for their perseverance, with common dolphins a plenty, and a few striped dolphins mixed in. We were also treated to a pod of bottlenose dolphins tail slapping for us. We even had a few whale blows and an unidentified beaked whale with her calf. There were lots of smiles all round and I suspect we will see future conservationists from that family.

Wildlife Officer Sophie with the Jones family braving some chilly winds for some great sightings.

One of the striped dolphins in a mixed pod with common dolphins

As we travelled from Roscoff to Cork, we encountered many interested French passengers on their holidays to Ireland. I was asked plenty of questions in French that I could only try to hazard a guess to answer. Since we are working on-board in such an international environment, Andy and I decided to brush up on our French and dust off the Spanish vocabulary for the different routes. We have also been testing each other during our deck watches. Luckily orca is very similar, orca in Spanish, and orque in French. Here’s a short list of some of the names we’ve been practising, perhaps they’ll come in useful for you too!

English	French	Spanish
Harbour Porpoise	Marsoin commun	Marsopa
Common Dolphin	Dauphin commun	Delfín común
Striped Dolphin	Dauphin bleu et blanc	Delfín listado
Bottlenose Dolphin	Grand Dauphin	Delfín de dientes rugosos
Long-finned Pilot Whale	Globicéphale noir	Calderon común
Minke Whale	Petit Rorqual	Rorcual aliblanco
Fin Whale	Rorqual commun	Rocual común
Sperm Whale	Cachalot macrocephaly	Cachalote
Cuvier’s Beaked Whale	Ziphius	Zifio Común

So we’re looking forward to hopefully a great season of sightings and being able to describe them to passengers three times over, in French,Spanish and English.

Sophie

Wildlife Officer aboard the Pont Aven