The Tenerife Cabildo says that it has been successful in getting the Ministerio de Transición Ecológica, essentially Spain’s Department for Climate Change, to issue a moratorium on licences for whale- and dolphin-watching boats in Tenerife. The announcement was made by the the Cabildo’s director of the Coastal and Sea Sustainability director Ana María Oroño, who said that the measure was an attempt to guarantee that the activity, fully legal with licensed craft, was sustainable given the significant numbers of cetaceans found to have been injured by ferries and fishing boats as well as those disturbed generally by sightseers. A study will be carried out to try to evaluate and fix the capacity for such acctivities in the Teno-Rasca area, an area of special conservation. The moratorium is likely to last for at least the next two years.
2019-08-20