Captain Bruno and Chief Mate Julian help how they can. Piedade, the Bosun, is in white. After almost 11 years, this is the first restoration … not bad for a lady of her size.

On March 16th this year I did my hundredth dive. I wrote the mysterious number 100 in my Dives Logbook. There was seven of us, the water felt a bit fresh, ONLY 26° degrees Celsius, (79° F) brrrrr! There is a beautiful wall of basalt in Virgin Gorda, the island discovered by Columbus in November 1493, he named it this, because it seemed to him, perhaps hungry for sex after many months at sea, a virgin lying there a little chubby. The dive was quiet and relaxed, no DSD (Discovery Scuba Divers) to take care of, all former guests with whom I had previously dove, and even Sandra, the HOS (Head of Sports) is quiet and adjusts the octopus to his father, he is on holiday and he came to visit.

Descending to 23 meters, there are gardens of sea fans, parrot fish everywhere, a barracuda is spying on us, as only they know how to do… curious, moving with caution, he seems to want to try biting my fins, or so it seems to me, every time I look at him I see his teeth are a bit unbalanced and crooked.

On the way back we spy a sea eagle in the middle of the group, she gives us plenty of time to take a couple of pictures, and, passing by, reviews the bubbles coming out of the dispensers, then she performs a rapid curve and disappears into the blue.

A year ago, while I was alone on the promontory of Falmouth Harbor in Antigua, another small-tailed Eagle Ray and I swam together for about ten minutes… It was just one of those lazy afternoons where guests have had their fill of the barbecue on the beach, and replete, doze off in the shade under some branches of the tropical trees. No one is ready for snorkeling in the afternoon. So, the sea is all for myself, I do not have to share it with anyone, I do not have to keep stopping to tell to anyone the history of starfish that if the you cut off a limb it grows another… or about strombide and ‘the biggest shell’ … largest in the Caribbean. My mask is fitting perfectly, the fins are formidable, there is no current and, most important, I’m not cold. That is strange, usually my body fat gives me less than 20 minutes in the water before I start shivering. And as the visibility improves, arriving nearer the sea bed at more or less 8 meters above it, the Eagle Ray checked.

At the beginning she is resting on her own, and as I try to approach her, she swims away, so I move out and then she follows me … I dove myself, looking to overtake her, trying to win as if we two are in a swimming race … she just raises a pectoral fin, and lowers the other, and in less than a second she has turned 180 degrees … then I move away, I continued my run … a slow kick to the steep wall where the sun is shining makes a violent impact. And while returning to the surface after a quick check for any split , there she is, silent as I pass by, it seems like I spy … she pretends not to notice me … but I know that I was seen … I shaved my legs yesterday and I know what I look like….jejeje and then we started dancing, a respectful dance. We invite each other, a slow game of parts, she recedes and then I, we play like old friends until, just a second before I could be wrapped in a sort of cosmic happiness, I start sobbing … What ????? Yes, I have a lump in my throat, I rise sharply, tears fill my mask, my throat contracts, I cannot say anything but I start to apologize to my new friend……

Me, us, we are such a stupid organisms that destroy our habitats. Are we such a bastard race that we cannot see and stop the destruction of your oceans? Catching till there are no more of your fish, reducing your prey to the minimum, dumping any kind of s**t on it. I need a mask and fins just to float, only, not even like your small offsprings … compared to your perfect timing of this movement I’m a heavy stone. At this moment, I cannot do more than to stammer apologies to you, and to all those that share these waters with you. I feel like a spokesperson for our consciousness, I feel the tip of the iceberg of the too few people who are looking for some way to do as little damage as possible, but at the same time they are inevitably witnessing desecration, unfortunately due to the presence of bipeds on the planet.

And what do you do? What can you do? You dance with me.

Today I counted my dives: 4456 minutes under the surface, this is only 73 hours, a little more than 3 days, which in 15 years … It is a trifling amount of time.

But during these three days, I have never felt better. Understanding only now, the thoughts of Jaques Mayol, the passion of Cousteau, and the desperation of many, who like me, would like to see these dances never end … But listen, as not too far away, there is the sound of some danger that will come only too soon, mostly from those who do not care … and only for now they just pass by…

Mariano Peruzzo
Marine Biologist
SPV Royal Clipper
June 2011

It’s huge. North Friar’s in comparison seems to be just the newborn calf close to the adult female of blue whale. When the bus turns for the last time and we start to slowly go down from the hill we have in front of us all the majesty of the Atlantic Ocean. The name of the first, big, next island on the other side starts with an A and ends with FRICA….far far away. I can see in the eyes of the guests a sort of fear when you approach something that seems to be enormous and you can’t see the end… but I know that even if this thing that we are going to start they will be just few drops in the ocean, they will help, and, by the way, the oceans are made by drops … so better start now.

Behind me 20 guests in this small bus and behind us another bus with another 19. My fellow crew mates, Conrado, Francis, Sonny, Sandra and Angela are packed in between the seats, on the top of the boxes for the water and juice, with bags and glasses that come out from their pockets … It’s a nice vision. Big hats, colorful T-shirts, sandals and fancy sunglasses. We look like tourists but I know that this one is the best army ever invented: The Environmental Fighters. These warriors are the most efficient mercenaries that you can find on the market. They fight for an idea, for passion, for compassion if you want, and they put inside all the energy that they can find under the hats, behind those shirts and big glasses. And they will do it because they believe in what they are doing, and the maximum they will ask you in return is just for some water and a big warm hug … And that’s it. No complaints for the suspension of the bus that is not so right … about the sun that at two o’clock on this beach that reminds me of a movie like Lawrence from Arabia … no complaining if after a half mile down to the edge of the beach they have to carry back 20 kg of rubbish collected on their knees, and the biggest piece of plastic was smaller than our cabin card …That’s the way it should be. In less than two hours we removed 1,080 pounds of rubbish, mostly plastics and bottles of glass.

Dr. Kimberly Stewart was happy like me in doing that. She and her students from Ross University are really working hard to keep going with the Turtles project. I feel honored to have the chance to do something with her. Thanks, Kimberly!

Mariano Peruzzo is the resident marine biologist on board Royal Clipper.

Study is one thing and live the experience in another … how many oceanographers can say that they have been inside a small sphere under 11,000 thousand m in the Marianna trench? And who has managed with their own hands a tusk of Narval? Or touched the deposit of millions years of Bentic plankton? Marine Biologist is a general term that we use to indicate people that study “one” or a “few” of the subjects related to the oceans. Like I suggested in the beginning, a lifetime is not enough … so is a continuous “keep go on.”

The learning process never stops. Doing so is the only way to try to enlarge the point of view and have a better, wider vision of the subject. The library is full of books, but to be there … on the field … after the theory … the other sense are alerted now: smell, close vision, touch, feel with your own hands, see the color trough the air and not from a picture with printed colors … be in the same water where those organism live and be literary part of their environment, their game. I never stop being attracted by them and even on holiday I can’t say “NO” when something happens. So this summer during my vacation I contacted the CIMA Foundation in Savona and the same day that I was there to speak with dott. Aurelie Moulins in order to try to organize a series of professional cetacean watchings on the Royal Clipper for the next summer season on the Med, she receive a phone call about a stranding on the Ligurian coast line. In few minutes with her colleague dott. Massimiliano Rosso we joined the beach and collect one juvenile of Stenella coeruleoalba, a common dolphin in the Med. We transported it to the lab and then they try to figure out why he died.

It’s a different feeling, just touching a live body, for another experience later on in the summer in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where new friends utilize dolphins in captivity from a delfinarium for pet therapy with Down and Autistic people. This relation is fantastic. The dolphin approaches this guy and starts to transmit bio-sonar impulses that in a certain way — we’re not fully clarified how — calms the subject. Usually a sense of peace and sometimes a big smile appears on the face of those women or men, adults or children.

Usually they use bottle nose dolphins, Tursiops truncatos, and let me tell you, they are huge … some males can easily arrive up to 400 kg and when they allow you to give them a big hug … it’s probably the same experience that a car lovers can have when they can drive a Ferrari 300 km over the speed limit … but here it’s the animal that interact with you, blubber, bones and brain, not just wires, metal and oil … actually probably the same molecules, but different structures if you allow me the comparison.

I do not now which one I was playing … that dolphin in certain way accepts me in his world, it’s better and easier than many biped mammals that I know.

If being a Conservationist can help to better understand why the first dolphin stranded on the beach this summer or how the bio-sonar can help people with certain problems … let’s be a Conservationist and do our best at least to try. From my side. What about yours?

Mariano Peruzzo
Marine Biologist
Genova

But tonight we are facing the worst storm of my period on board. Wind force 9 on the Beaufort scale with a sea swell of 6 to 7 meters. Everything is on the floor. My precious collection of sea urchin skeletons has gone … the two and a half kilogram Marine Biology Book just landed on the top of the small paper box holding the fragile calcium carbonate structures. Such a horrible night … we lose a couple of sails … they ripped like old nose tissue during the strong winds that had gusts up to 61 knots. The china from the dining room and the glasses in the bar suffered a similar fate. We count the missing sick bags during the morning (hehehe).

But … and there is always a but after every storm of any kind … on the sea and in life … something happened the morning after. The sea is still rough, the waves around us still big and the rock and roll of the Royal still makes someone disappear once in a while with some sick bags, but with the first sunshine we discover some new guests on board. Some will call them “sin papier” “sin papeles” “clandestine” … moving from one country to the other without any documents, no need for stamps or visas in a passport, free like the wind, no border lines for them.

A very small group, or more correctly, a tiny Flight of Swallows, landed during the night on the Royal Clipper.

Under their scientific classification, swallows belong to the family Hirundinidae of the order Passeriformes. It is likely they were rossing from the northern parts of West Africa, such as Mauritania, Western Sahara and Morocco, to Europe, when they were hit by the storm. And so they took shelter with us — in the Tropical Bar, all over the rigging, down the lights into the wire boxes, on the top of the Zodiacs.

We are not Customs, demanding and exercising their duties, there is no-one to ask for documents, we let them take a rest. We shut down the lights and music and speak silently for two days. The lucky ones managed to fly away in Calvì, northwest of Corsica … another day, another migration, another country. They will spend the summertime in a European country, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Eastern countries, and some of them even as far east as the United Kingdom.

If you survive travelling such long way, in a storm of such force and intensity and you are so small you can stay in my hand, you well-deserve all my admiration. No technological radar for you, no deck hands to help during the strong winds, no warm coffee in the night, my true respect goes to these princesses of the sky. My springtime will be more pleasurable knowing that we helped some of your sisters with a simple, safe, quiet passage on the Royal Clipper.

Take care my friends.

Mariano Peruzzo
Marine Biologist
Royal Clipper
May 6th 2010 Calvì, Corsica, France territory.

Then we get into the Mediterranean Sea. Despite to the small surface of less than 1 percent of the total area cover by oceans, in this small sea we can find an incredible biodiversity, this water is rich in invertebrates, vertebrates and algae as much as certain tropical areas. Unfortunately, the fact that the exchange of water is limited to the small Gibraltar strait, just 15 kilometers wide, and Suez or Dardanelle straits if something happens inside … it remains inside. Pollution and overfishing are rising problems.

I write again to Professor Ferdinado Boero from University of Salento in Lecce, Puglia — the region in the famous heel of Italy. He is the Italian responsible for the project “Watch for Jellies” that is part of the International CIESM Jellywatch Programme (www.ciesm.org).

The project is focused on the study of the increasing of number of jelly fish in the Mediterranean sea, a modern plague basically due to overfishing, pollution and climate changes. In the healthy ecosystem small fish keep the jellyfish population in check by eating their young. Deplete the waters of top predators like tunas and sharks and catching moon fish and sea turtle is the first step to creating an unbalance in the ecosystem.

We had the first contact on the 5th of May around 9:30 UTC between Mallorca and Menorca Island in the Balearic archipelago 41° 39’ N and 7° 14’ E with floating Physalia, or better known as the Portuguese Man-of-War. These organisms travels in large groups on the surface of the sea, resembling brightly colored balloons floating on the water. Their appearance belies a painful secret under the water’s surface — tentacles that sting and inject poison. The poison is deadly to the many sea creatures that provide sustenance to the Man-of-War. Although not lethal to humans, bathers who are stung suffer greatly. The Man-of-War’s poison is a neurotoxin. Its effects on the nervous system can lead to a drop in blood pressure, difficulty in breathing, a weak pulse, and sometimes unconsciousness or a coma.

Portuguese Man-of-War. Photo from the Australian Museum.

During a dive two days later on May 7th in Portoferraio, Elba Island, Tuscan’s archipelago — more specifically close to the Scoglietto dive site — in the entrance of the gulf, 42° 50’ N and 11° 20’ E, on the surface after 35 minutes swimming into Posidonia Oceanica Meadows (seagrass), before jumping back into the Zodiac this time we have a meeting with relatively small Pelagia Noctiluca (5-8 centimeters in diameter) in a long bank more than 50 meters. The water during the dive was 17° C.

Pelagia Noctiluca.

Hopefully this information will be helpful for Professor Boero to better understand what’s go on with our carelessness now and in the close future.

Take care!

Dr. Mariano Peruzzo is Royal Clipper’s resident marine biologist.