"The spermments help to mitigate climate change." Txema Brotons launches this affirmation with enthusiasm, with the legitimacy of the scientist who has been studying the small population of this cetacean in the Western Mediterranean. He half-life sailing next to them, placing underwater microphones to register his unfathomable language of 'clicks', studying her habits.
Doctor in Biology and Founder of the Tursiops Association, Brotons displays his praise from the Bachalote in his interior office of Mallorca, a glazed office that rain hits hard when he receives this diary, as if it were the control bridge of a ship, as if it were the control bridge of a ship, as if it were the control bridge of a ship, as if it were the bridge of a ship But ground in.
While speaking, you are taking off your work tools from the shelves: a device with suction cups to monitor large cetaceans, a telescopic pole and some models of this animal animal, including a real-scale fang, large as the forearm of a child.
"The spermments invest the cycle of matter because they eat in depth and defecate on the surface, when they go up to breathe, thus uploading organic matter from the bottom," he says. That matter is rich in iron and therefore has essential nutrients for the phytoplankton, which in turn traps CO2 on the surface. "That's why they contribute to the fight against global warming."
It is just one of the peculiarities of this great animal, extreme diver, capable of making apnea of 130 minutes to download more than 1,500 meters in search of your favorite food: the calamari of great depth. Eat between shadows, guided by its perfect acoustic sonar.
For three years, the conservationist entity that Brotons runs follows the track of a valuable finding. During his last three expeditions, developed aboard his Irifi sailboat, 12 meters in length, have been observing something different in the small population of a thousand copies that, according to his calculations, survive in the western basin of the Mediterranean, which extends From Gibraltar to the Messina Strait.
In recent years they have been able to document the presence of a natural 'nursery' of sperm. A sanctuary chosen by the females of this species to take care (and probably give birth), located in the sea open north of Menorca, in an area that goes from 20 to 200 kilometers from the coast.
It is an investigation into development, but Brotons and its team have been able to document it, filming and registering the activity of the group, with offspring of just a few days old. And they are sure to have discovered something remarkable. The images, which yields to the world, show the group engraved from a drone. There they have seen in a single expedition more young than in all the previous years.
"The schalotes have a complex social structure," he explains with Marga Cerdà and Yaiza Vitoria, Oceanographer and Biologist of the Association respectively. They live and relate in three ways. "Adult males are lonely and only come together to mate." Before, the males eventually form groups of young adults, such as 'gangs' independent of their mothers. "They are the most active, the most move" and emerge. Finally, and at the base of those three stadiums, are the females, who live and take care of the offspring. They protect themselves to each other and one monitor the offspring -Inly to dive at great depth without breathing- while others dive to feed themselves.
The three groups have been documented in Baleares. But it is that collective of mothers and offspring, a nourished daycare with groups of a dozen copies, which has caught the attention of the researchers. Now they aspire to be able to continue analyzing this phenomenon, which could shed some keys on the behavior of a threatened species in the middle of the busy Mediterranean Sea.
"You do not know yet why they congregate there, maybe because it is a quiet area, with less navigation than others." Nor is it known if they are all year or only during the summer months, when Tursiops follow-up campaigns are developed, thanks to the Brotons team and a handful of volunteers. "If we could install a fixed hydrophone (a high sensitivity aquatic microphone), we would have more data," explains Cerdá. It is not something simple: one of these teams can cost up to 80,000 euros and lack institutional support.
Hunted for years to obtain the precious spermaceti (a fat present inside the great skull of the spermments), these great mammals that can measure up to 14 meters long and live up to 80 years are still in danger of extinction For IUCN. His great enemy is maritime traffic, the collisions being the main cause of non-natural mortality. And although the overexploitation does not diminish its main food, in recent times it has reappeared its great enemies: illegal drift networks, so-called curtains of death, prohibited by the international community.
The existence of a daycare can give tracks of how to help preserve the species on the Spanish coasts.
Date Of Update: 09 December 2021, 11:24
