The first sighting of a blue whale for four years in waters off the coast of Tenerife, was caught on camera on Monday afternoon by the crew of the Bonadea II catamaran during an excursion along the Costa Adeje coast from Puerto Colon.
Boat captains will tell you that it is very rare to see blue whales in these waters, although a week ago another one was claimed to have been spotted near to La Gomera but it wasn’t caught on camera.
The Bonadea crew say that they recognised it was a blue whale that they had recorded because of its turquoise colour when it came to the surface. "This is their most characteristic feature, although you can also see by its fin or specks on its body what species it is, as long as you know what you are looking for”.
Blue whales are the largest animals on Earth. They are bluish in colour with grey tones, measure between 25 and 30 metres long and weigh around 100 tons. They are present in all oceans, but where are found the most in the North Pacific and North Antarctic.
Tenerife: a sanctuary for whales.
This encounter took place in the waters off the west coast of Tenerife, an area rich in some types of cetaceans, with resident populations of pilot whales and the presence of sperm whales, turtles and sometimes even humpback whales. Three years ago, this stretch of water was declared as a Whale Sanctuary, the only one in the EU and only the third in the world.
The protected area comprises of the Teno-Rasca marine strip, which covers an area to the west of the island of Tenerife of 69,000 hectares, from the coastline of the municipalities of Buenavista del Norte, Santiago del Teide, Guía de Isora, Adeje, and Arona. Around 600 specimens of cetaceans, loggerhead turtles, dolphins, and sperm whales are living in it.
However, there is a small plot that is not included within this stretch of water, which is where the Canary Islands Government, when it was previously led by the Canary Islands Coalition, planned to build a new commercial port in Fonsalía.
This maritime infrastructure would occupy more than 222,000 square metres with a dock having berths for five large ships, a fishing dock, 200 dry dock spaces, and 467 jetty spaces for privately owned boats.
In October 2021, the Canary Islands Parliament agreed to "the definitive abandonment" of the construction of the Fonsalía port, in a vote promoted by political party Sí Podemos, as well as any budgetary investment related to it. This construction was proposed in 1998 by the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Port Authority to relieve the traffic in and out of the Los Cristianos port.
