Out of the blue

It’s 7:15 in the morning and we are crossing the channel between the island of Kalamos and the mainland. With the colorful sunrise never failing to amaze us with its beauty, we take the volunteers to the bus station at Mytikas. It has been an incredible week of sightings and after the volunteers leave for Athens, we meet with our friend Adonis for a Greek coffee near the sea.

We are all sitting in the cafeteria drinking and chatting a mix of English, Italian, Greek and Spanish when suddenly Marina spots a dorsal fin, right in front of us. Bottlenose dolphins in the Mytikas channel! Wow! Go or not go? It is our rest time before a hard day working on boat reparations. But we see a calf in the group and we decide to take the boat and try to identify the mother.

The sea is perfect and in five minutes we approach the group. We don’t have any research equipment on board but we immediately realize that LARA has come back. The calf in the group is her new baby!

LARA is one of the most resident bottlenose dolphins and she has been seen in the waters of Kalamos since 1994. She gave birth to three babies during this time. We are happy to see that her fourth calf was born, after the bad experience with her latest offspring, ZOI.

ZOI was born in the summer of 2004 but its rostrum got entangled in fishing gear and this caused major lesions as the calf grew up. ZOI did not survive to adult age.

Today’s encounter with LARA and her new baby is good news. Life has managed to surface again out of the blue waters of Kalamos.

Marina Costa, Shiva Javdan, Marcel Clusa