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here are encounters that change your life. At the age of 15, Txema Brotons was lucky enough to swim with a dolphin. “In winter,” recalls the scientific director of the NGO Tursiops, “a dolphin came into the Port del Toro  and some friends and I wanted to swim with it.  They had wetsuits and tanks. I was in a bathing suit, freezing to death. My friends dived in and the dolphin disappeared. They warned me that the dolphin was between two pontoons. I got out on a boat and went towards the dolphin. I was scared but the dolphin and I swam together and at one point I even touched it. My friends saw us, dived in, the dolphin got scared and left. The magic was broken.”

Everyone dreams of swimming with a dolphin, big or small. But is it a good idea?  “I would not advise it today, but back then we knew less things. Since the coronavirus, we've understood that humans are not immune to viruses from the animal world. But dolphins can carry viruses and bacteria that can affect humans, and humans can transmit viruses to animals. And let's not forget that dolphins are wild animals weighing 350 kg, and if they want to, they can bite you or submerge you underwater. They're very friendly, but if there's a female in heat or a mother with her calf, their behaviour can change,” says Brotons.

In the 1990s, when Brotons had finished his studies as a biologist, it was clear that he would work on dolphins in Mallorca. At that time, there was only limited data available. “The first study to categorise cetaceans in the Balearic Sea was published in 1996 by Brotons,” explains Marga Cerda. In 1998, Brotons founded the Tursiops NGO, which took off in 2013, with the arrival of Marga, who has a degree in marine science. “From 2013 onwards, we began researching in earnest,”  explains Cerda. Both Txema Brotons and Marga Cerda emphasise that “knowledge is the key to protection. You have to know in order to protect them.”