The Cetacean Alliance web site is an attempt to raise awareness, promote marine conservation, and prevent the decline of dolphins living in Mediterranean coastal waters. It contains information about science, conservation, education and what you can do to help the coastal dolphins of the Mediterranean region.

Amvrakikos Gulf offers abundant prey resources allowing the local bottlenose dolphin population to thrive. However, only 30 kilometers away, around the island of Kalamos, over fishing has resulted in prey depletion and ecosystem collapse. Consequently, only a handful of endangered short-beaked common dolphins remain today. We meet scientists, educators and local fishermen to discuss their relationship with dolphins, and the state of sea around their community. Could what is happening to the common dolphins of Kalamos, also explain why they are disappearing throughout the Mediterranean Sea?

The aim of traveling through the Mediterranean to document so many research programs was to paint a picture of conservation topics that affect cetaceans local and the efforts to protect them on a regional level. After spending three months in the Mediterranan in 2007, and on previous research programs in 2004, I am convinced the lack of public awareness is a major hurdle in the effort to help protect and conserve cetaceans in this region.

Longer than wider, 3,800 kilometers separate the western most point from the distant eastern shore, while its greatest breadth does not exceed 700km. Its average depth is 1,429 meters, and its surface covers an area of 2.5 million square kilometers, about 1% of the total of the surface of the world’s oceans.

This is the first of a five-part series called “Whales of an Ancient Sea”. In this episode, earthOCEAN explore the geology, and oceanographic history of the ancient Mediterranean Sea. They discover the species of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) inhabiting the basin, talk with the scientists who work for the conservation of the species and their various habitats.