Words by Andi Cross. Photography by Adam Moore.

Meeting Marie

I’d never seen colors like it. Red, orange, and yellow coming together over water. Resting over the horizon with a calm and still cerulean ocean below. The air smelled like coconut, probably because that’s all we’d been eating for a week, and probably because coconuts can be found everywhere in Vanuatu. I sat on the shore with Marie, her hand in mine. Hers were large, strong. Callused from years of experience. My other hand traced patterns in the sand, as if I might never touch this exact place again. And the truth was, I probably wouldn’t. That’s the struggle with being on a multi-year expedition around the world: you have to get good at saying goodbye to the people and places you fall in love with.

We sat in silence for a while before Marie asked me to read her the story I’d written about my partner, Adam Moore, and I diving her Little Bay. No one had ever gone far enough past the wave break to see what was out there, and she wanted to know what we’d found. After all, she spent her entire life protecting this stretch of ocean without ever catching a glimpse beneath its surface. I suspected she didn’t know how to swim, as that was common for Indigenous women of the South Pacific islands.

A sense of nerves washed over me. What if she didn’t like it? What if my descriptions didn’t land? These are the things that run through your mind when you step into different cultures, into alternate worlds. You’re always wondering when your welcome will run thin. I was hesitant to start, but I couldn’t deny the request. She had been so gracious hosting us for over a week, as if we were two of her own.

I cleared my throat, and with a shaking voice, began by describing the will power it took to get there in the first place. I had been the one to reach out to Marie wanting to learn more about the bay. I’d seen a single photo of it online in my research of the region, and in turn, found her—appearing as nothing more than an email address. I had no idea who she was or what she looked like. If she’d even respond at all to my random fascination with her home, in what some would call the middle of nowhere.

Marie had to travel 45 minutes from her village in the north of Espiritu Santo down to the provincial capital, Luganville, to even begin our correspondence. Our conversations came in fragments, half-understood words. There was a significant amount of waiting between messages. But after a few months, we had somehow made a plan. She agreed to open up one of her bungalows to me, and I agreed to show up.

Our instant connection was uncanny, despite coming from completely different worlds. Me, a New Yorker who had moved to the other side of the globe to become a scuba diver. Her, a ni-Vanuatu from a nation comprising 83 islands. I found immediate comfort in her warm smile. In her welcoming gift of a road-side coconut. She hugged me so tightly upon our first meeting, as if we were kindred spirits.

I went on to recount the small pranks she played on us throughout our stay. All our shared laughter. I told her how I felt more relaxed than I can remember sleeping in her handmade beachside bungalows—the sound of the ocean rocking me to sleep every night. How her cooking—from the coconut crab the size of my head to the fresh fish caught just down the road—would be forever embedded in our memories. I told her how both Adam and I valued every detail she so meticulously planned, all to ensure we felt like Vanuatu was a place we could call our own. Even if we all knew it never would be.

Looking back on that first plunge into Marie’s Little Bay, we were met with a reef untouched by time. Vibrant and alive, unlike anything we had seen. Colors that only nature can create, much like the Vanuatuan sunset, flooded our senses. It was hard not to get emotional. Adam and I had seen so much damage underwater—where even the most iconic reefs are struggling with bleaching, pollution, degradation. But this place was free from those scars. I was thankful to see something so wholesome and resilient could still be found in this hard world. Both on land and out to sea. The reef reminded me of Marie.

I paused and looked over at her. She was crying, trying to hide away the tears rolling down her rounded face. “No one has ever written a story like this for me. I never knew what was in my Little Bay. Now you’ve shown me. My work protecting it was worth something. I’ll never forget you for this.”

For Marie, this newfound knowledge meant she had the ability to open her bungalows to divers. An alternate livelihood she, and her entire community, so desperately needed. The pandemic had hit Vanuatu’s tourism businesses hard, like it did throughout most of the Pacific Islands. She walked me through her grand plans. I had helped make them actionable and sustainable. And on my end, I was starting to realize Adam and I were on to something bigger with this expedition concept we’d conjured up. I’d envisioned a future where my calling was here, on the edges, helping people see what might be out of sight, even in their own backyard.

Discovering Our Edge

I met Marie in 2023, not fully understanding the gravity of that moment. I didn’t yet know that Adam and I would go on to meet many more people like her on what we had started calling the Edges of Earth expedition—an idea that first surfaced years earlier, in 2019. I didn’t know how many times we’d have to say goodbye. How often we’d leave places we had come to love.

It all started when I moved from the east coast of the United States to the far-flung remoteness of Western Australia. Perth, the only major city in the state, felt rugged in a way I couldn’t fathom coming from a city of nearly nine million. People went barefoot to the supermarket. Kangaroos were just as much neighbors as humans. Status wasn’t tied to what you earned, but instead to the size of the waves you could surf. At least, that’s how I came to understand it through Adam.

The more we explored this wild west, the more a question began to follow me: what else is out there? In the vastness of a state the size of half the US, with only three million people spread across it, I tapped into an insatiable curiosity. One that came less from ambition, and more from a desire to understand what I did not.

At the time, Adam was working brutally long days as an accountant while I was in strategy, selling things that didn’t feel like they mattered, to people who didn’t really need them. We had built clear, defined skills over the course of our twenties. But the way we were using them didn’t sit right. Was this really it? Was this how we were meant to spend our lives? Slaves to a computer screen? Selling our souls to whatever mega company we were to work for next?

As our relationship grew, so did our time mulling over those questions. We’d brainstorm on long car rides looking for surf about the life we wanted. And about what we could actually contribute to the cause we both passionately cared about: Earth. As we contrasted our workdays with weekends spent on Western Australia’s white-sand beaches, we watched as two completely different versions of life were unfolding.

At the same time, I was diving nonstop—what had brought me here in the first place. I was spending nearly as much time underwater as I was on land, documenting places like the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Triangle whenever I could. And with every dive, I started to notice where there was beauty, there was also destruction. Plastic caught in coral and damage where there should have been life. Every dive reminded me of the tension my life now held. The endless consumer products of my origins and the wilderness of my new home.

I was living in two worlds that didn’t reconcile. New York was the place that shaped me—centered around consumption, ambition, and always-on speed. And then there was Perth—a place that stripped things back, reconnecting me to nature while pulling me further from everything familiar. I couldn’t fully belong to either. I felt stuck between them, trying to figure out how to make sense of both without turning my back on one.

My dive guides, often locals, would unknowingly cut through that internal battle. They spoke about their work with a kind of actualization I didn’t have. Their lives were centered around protecting their home. They were fixated on restoring reefs by hand, removing waste piece by piece, pushing for policies to safeguard what remained. Not for recognition and certainly not for reward. Just because it was theirs to protect. They were doing it out of love.

I was struck by these narratives. By how deeply they could commit to a place, while I still had a foot in two worlds. Of all the questions building in me about our planet in decline, my purpose, and where I fit into any of it, one rose above the rest. Why weren’t these stories from the edges being told?

By 2023, Adam and I couldn’t ignore these questions anymore. We both wanted to feel something different in our work, and we wanted to understand how other people were building lives that felt aligned with what mattered to them. So we sold most of what we owned, cancelled our lease, and packed our lives into two bags. One for dive gear, the other for everything else.

The plan was to move from one edge to the next. Spend time with people doing the hardest work in the field. Instead of leading or talking, we were to listen and learn. And our hope was, with the skills and connections we had, we could help carry their impact further. A few people took a chance on us in those early days. Marie was one of them.

A New Way of Life

The rest of 2023 was spent moving through the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, each step across the eastern hemisphere testing us in ways we hadn’t anticipated. We learned quickly how to adapt—to unfamiliar food, to constant movement, to discomfort that slowly became routine. Nights on the floor of a makeshift cabin with Kanak families in the north of New Caledonia toughened us. A cliffside shelter in the Solomon Islands, with torrential rain hammering down for a week straight, showed us how little we actually needed. Sleepless nights camping in Thailand, sea lice lighting our skin on fire, made us appreciate our health in a way we never had before.

And it didn’t ease up. In Cambodia, relentless storms left us unsure what we’d wake up to. In Vietnam, pollution was inescapable—on land and underwater. The Andaman Islands brought food poisoning that stopped us in our tracks. In the Philippines, we came face-to-face with illegal fishing fleets that shook us to our core. It was physically draining in a way that could have broken us. But what hit us harder was the weight of what we were seeing.

It’s one thing to read about a changing climate. It’s another to live inside it. To see, up close, how the most vulnerable communities are carrying the consequences of decisions made far beyond their control. They would often be living among trash that has washed in from other countries that were far more populated than their slice of island. They would experience intensifying storms that would destroy their homes and deplete them of their savings. Large in part due to a warming planet that they had very little to do with based on their carbon footprint.

We’d lie awake at night, silent, trying to process it all. The damage and scale of it. The responsibility we started to realize was in our hands to ensure we weren’t extracting and giving as much as we could instead. By morning, we were exhausted—not just from the harsh conditions, but from our endless cognitive processing of what we had seen.

And still, we never questioned being there. Because every day, we were alongside people who refused to give up. We were diving, trekking, documenting alongside scientists, First Nations communities, conservationists, and activists. And over and over, there it was: that same connection I had felt with Marie. It didn’t matter where we came from or how different our lives looked. We were always welcomed with open arms when able to communicate our shared commitment to protect what was still here.

What was most potent, however, was the outlook of those we met. These were people living on the frontlines of the climate crisis, watching their ecosystems change in real time. Despite the drama of this loss, their stories weren’t well known; they weren’t social media stars and the contents of their days weren’t clickbait. And yet, their sense of purpose was unwavering. Instead of being stuck in place, paralyzed by what was happening to them, they were acting on it. It forced us to look at ourselves differently. When we showed up exhausted or overwhelmed, carrying the weight of the problem, while they carried only solutions, we had to check ourselves.

Take the Tetepare Descendants Association of the Solomon Islands. They pushed to keep their ancestral homeland free from the logging industry—one of the only successful holdouts of 1,000 islands in the country to do so. Or Andaman Discoveries of Thailand, helping the once nomadic Moken people reclaim their seafaring ways after the government revoked them in 2004. Or Marine Conservation Cambodia, which was warding off illegal trawlers that were killing off the country’s marine life.

These people became our colleagues and our friends. Our guiding teachers and our definition of heroes. Because of this, our expedition work was far from some pursuit of discovery, or a claim to something new—which is how we once understood expeditioning to be. This instead was a journey to stand alongside those already doing the hardest work, and to help it reach beyond the edges they were fighting to protect.

Finding the Positive Outliers

By 2024, we found ourselves driving the length of Central America in a car that was barely street legal, crossing rough borders from Panama to Belize. Along the eastern coast of Mexico, we dove the world’s deepest blue hole, spending time learning from the fishermen who had first discovered it on how they were now planning on protecting it. Further north, we dove through the cenotes—sacred sinkholes and caves that the Mayans called their underworld. We crossed the country to see how marine protected areas were being created and enforced by local communities, those deeply connected to this land so rich with biodiversity.

In South America, we moved through Patagonia and out to the Falkland Islands / Malvinas, where king penguins wandered close without hesitation. Off Argentina, elephant seals stretched across the shoreline, unfazed by our presence. It often felt like we had arrived at exactly the right moment for the perfect wild encounter. But for us it was never about that. We were always searching for the human connection.

By the time we reached the southernmost tip of the Americas, two years in, we had documented close to 200 of these progressive case studies. We called them this because, to us, they were blueprints for a better future—repeatable models that others could use, if experiencing similar challenges, in similar environments. Through this, we had met over 1,000 positive outliers, as we started to call them. People and teams facing their ecological and cultural challenges head on, and making a real difference despite the odds.

When we immersed ourselves in places far removed from what we once called “normal,” the more living at the edges began to change us. It was showing up in what we chose to eat, forcing us to reduce our meat and fish intake. It crept up in the conversations we were having, finding ourselves in heated conversations about the challenges of open-net salmon farming instead of what’s trending on Netflix. It even started showing up in how we looked, as we rotated through four outfits and washed our clothes in buckets. We didn’t care. We loved it.

In return, we leaned into our role on behalf of those on the edges. We were never in these places to lead conservation work, but rather, to help move it forward. To connect these teams with the exposure and support they needed—whether through funding, media, or simply getting the right people to pay attention. We had the ability to do that because of our previous corporate careers, which was largely why I didn’t want to turn my back on home. Home gave me something valuable—a tangible skill and the work ethic to back it up. It just had to be harnessed and curated in the right way. Towards something that provided value to people who needed it most. And because of that, the relationships we built didn’t end when we moved on. If anything, they deepened.

I remember a stretch of road through Patagonia on the Chilean side, asking Adam if we’d ever be able to live like we once did back in New York, or even Perth. Perth felt large now. Would we care about what we wore, what we owned, how big our house was? Could we go back to small talk about the weather? Would we always be thinking about the intensifying storms we’d seen on expedition instead? Could we eat the same processed foods, knowing the true cost with every bite?

By the time we had crossed five countries in South America and were on our way to Africa, we had our answer. There was no “going back.” Even our physicality had changed—hardly recognizable to fair-weather-friends who knew us in another life. Our face and limbs were always lightly dusted with dirt. Hair knotted and sunbleached, from too much exposure to the elements. Our hands had hardened. They reminded me of Marie.

Our Future on the Edges

Today, we are three years into this global voyage. Six continents, 47 countries, 250 communities, and counting. We’re still meeting people on all kinds of edges, from the most remote to the most urban. Positive outliers exist everywhere, if you’re willing to look closely enough.

We measure success differently now. In the relationships built and in the tears we shed upon a goodbye. When we get to share with a woman, for the first time, what sits beneath the surface of her Little Bay that she spent her life protecting. That’s success. Marie was the one who showed us what life on the edges could be. She reframed why we explore. While it was never about the perfect shot, or the dopamine hit of Instagram likes, we didn’t have a full handle on the “why.” She showed us that, to explore, means to forge deeper human connection. Exploration means helping people see what has always been there, even if just slightly out of reach.

What we didn’t expect was how hard it would be to carry that way of living back with us. To sit in a city and not think about the coastlines we’ve seen changing. To have conversations that skim the surface after years spent in places where everything discussed is painfully deep about our planet’s future. To exist within systems of overconsumption and resource extraction that we once moved through so easily, now seeing them for what they are. We’re still learning how to live with that tension. How to exist in both worlds without turning away from either. How to let them benefit one another, instead of letting the never-ending contradictions pull us to shreds.

Escaping one life for another was never the grand plan. It was to understand how to bring them together. To take what we’ve learned on the edges—the way people commit themselves to something bigger than they are—and apply it to the lives we came from. To think more boldly and to question what we know. To act with intention, which we certainly didn’t fully grasp before this journey. Back then, we were more fixated on ourselves—what we needed and wanted—oblivious to the fact that even our smallest actions cause ripple effects reaching the ends of the Earth.

We’re not finished. There are still more positive outliers to meet and more case studies to carry forward. But our burning questions have changed. Gone are the days of chasing “what’s out there?” or “where do I fit in?” Those questions feel selfish now. Instead, we’re asking how far stories of human ingenuity can reach. Can they outshine the clickbait? Can they shift culture? Can they open our eyes to what we stand to lose if we don’t change our ways? We will keep showing up to play our part in it all. At home and on every edge that welcomes us next.

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About the Cover Conservationists

Andi Cross and Adam Moore are the co-founders of Edges of Earth, a multi-year global expedition documenting the people, places, and practices shaping the future of ocean and land conservation. Three years in, they have traveled across six continents, 47 countries, and 250 communities, working alongside the scientists, First Nations leaders, conservationists, and local stewards they call positive outliers. Andi writes and leads the storytelling side of the expedition; Adam handles photography and field direction. Follow their journey at edgesofearth.com.

The question visitors to Tenerife are increasingly asking before they book is one that would have seemed unusual a few years ago: is the water actually safe to swim in? It is a fair and important question, and one that deserves a straightforward, evidence-based answer rather than either alarming exaggeration or reassuring dismissal. The situation is genuinely complicated, varies significantly by location and season, and is in the middle of a politically charged response from local and national authorities.

The Scale of the Pollution Problem

The water quality crisis affecting parts of Tenerife is not a tabloid invention. In late 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union formally condemned Spain for failing to comply with the EU’s Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, identifying at least 12 specific locations on Tenerife where sewage collection, treatment, and discharge into coastal waters was either inadequate or entirely absent. [1] This followed years of documented failures. Environmental analysis cited by campaigners estimated that approximately 57 million litres of wastewater are discharged into Canary Islands seas every day, equivalent in volume to around 17 Olympic swimming pools. [2]

The consequences became impossible to ignore in 2024 and 2025. Playa Jardín, a well-known black-sand beach in Puerto de la Cruz on the island’s north coast, was closed for almost a year after E. coli levels in the water significantly exceeded safe limits. Investigations revealed fractured discharge pipes, pumping stations operating without legal authorisation, and a wastewater treatment plant that had gone years without the mandatory inspections and repairs. [3] In August 2025, the Public Prosecutor’s Office took the unusual step of charging six officials — including a former mayor of Puerto de la Cruz and the island’s former Tourism Department head — with environmental negligence and mismanagement of public infrastructure. [3]

The Spanish environmental NGO Ecologistas en Acción, which publishes an annual “Black Flag” report ranking the worst-managed coastal zones in Spain, awarded black flags to both Playa Jardín and Puertito de Adeje in its 2025 edition. [4] Puertito de Adeje, on the island’s southwest coast, was flagged not for E. coli but for what the organisation described as poor management in relation to new luxury coastal development and an underwater garden project that critics argue threatens endangered marine species. [4]

Storm events have made the underlying infrastructure problems dramatically visible. When Storm Claudia brought heavy rainfall in November 2025, drainage systems in Garachico and Las Américas were overwhelmed, sending wet wipes, oils, and other debris onto the shore. Beachgoers in Las Américas reported finding white, greasy masses on the sand, which chemists explained as the product of soaps and oils in wastewater reacting when pushed out to sea. [5] The Canary Islands government’s own discharge register, updated in 2025, recorded 403 coastal discharge points across the archipelago, with more than half operating without full authorisation. [1]

The Response: €81 Million and a 2030 Target

In February 2026, Tenerife’s Island Council formally presented an €81 million infrastructure plan designed to address these failures over a four-year period running through 2030. The plan covers modernising outdated wastewater networks, increasing treatment capacity, preventing unauthorised coastal discharges, and improving coordination between the island’s municipalities, which have historically operated fragmented and sometimes incompatible sanitation systems. [6] Vice President Lope Afonso framed the initiative around a “zero waste” ambition and called on all local municipalities to participate in the 2027-2030 Cooperation Plan. [6]

The plan has been welcomed cautiously by environmental groups. The Tenerife Association of Friends of Nature (ATAN), which was among the first organisations to raise public alarms about the contamination crisis in early 2026, has called for more transparency about the actual scale of coastal pollution and demanded that tourists be given honest information about water quality at specific beaches rather than generic reassurances. [1] This tension between the island’s economic dependence on tourism and the imperative to communicate environmental problems honestly is not going away quickly.

Where Is It Actually Safe to Swim?

The water quality situation varies significantly across Tenerife’s coastline, and not all beaches are affected equally. The problems documented in official reports are concentrated primarily in the north of the island, around Puerto de la Cruz and parts of the northeast coast, and in specific southern locations where infrastructure has struggled to keep pace with resort development.

The southern resort strip between Los Cristianos and Costa Adeje generally maintains higher water quality, supported by more recently built sanitation infrastructure and EU Blue Flag certification at several beaches. Blue Flag status, awarded annually by the Foundation for Environmental Education, requires compliance with strict water quality testing, environmental management standards, and safety requirements — making it the most reliable indicator of consistently clean swimming water available to visitors. [7]

Practical guidance for 2026 visitors: check the current flag status at your specific beach on arrival, not the status from a previous season. Red flag means swimming is forbidden, regardless of the reason. Avoid swimming within 48 hours of heavy rainfall anywhere on the island, as storm runoff affects even beaches that are generally well managed. The north coast, including the Puerto de la Cruz area, carries higher current risk than the southwest. Beaches within the southern resort area with active Blue Flag certification — including Playa de Troya, Playa del Duque, and Las Vistas in Los Cristianos — are your safest options while the infrastructure improvements work their way through the system.

Looking Ahead

Tenerife’s coastal pollution crisis is real, but it is being taken seriously in a way it was not a few years ago. EU legal pressure, criminal charges against officials, a significant funding commitment, and genuine civic pressure from environmental organisations have combined to produce a political response with specific targets and timelines. Whether that response is adequate, and whether it moves fast enough to protect both public health and the island’s reputation, is a question that will be answered in the coming years.

What is certain is that the era of uncritical optimism about Tenerife’s beach water quality is over. Visitors deserve accurate information, and the island’s long-term interests as a destination are better served by honest communication than by silence.

Sources

1. BritBrief: Health alert for Canary Islands — tourists warned about beach water pollution, britbrief.co.uk, January 2026
2. National World: Warning to avoid 48 Black Flag beaches in Spain, nationalworld.com, June 2024
3. DaNews.eu: Prosecutor charges six officials over pollution at Playa Jardín in Tenerife, August 2025
4. Travel Tomorrow: Tenerife set to invest €81 million to clean up island’s coastline and reputation, traveltomorrow.com, February 2026
5. Canarian Weekly: Waste and pollution wash up on Tenerife’s coastline again, canarianweekly.com
6. Travel and Tour World: Tenerife Plans to Invest Eighty Million Euros in Overhauling Water and Sanitation Infrastructure, travelandtourworld.com, February 2026
7. Curious Expeditions: Is the sea clean in Tenerife?, curiousexpeditions.org, March 2026

Tenerife is one of the most unique territories of the eastern Atlantic, an island where geology and the ocean engage in a continuous and visible dialogue. The largest of the Canary Islands is characterized by extreme morphology: volcanic peaks, jagged lava coasts, and seabeds that plunge rapidly into deep ocean waters. This combination makes the island not only a point of scenic interest but also an area of significant environmental and biological importance.

At the center of the island rises Mount Teide, Spain’s highest volcano, dominating a landscape shaped by millennia of volcanic activity. Lava flows, solidified along the coasts, testify to a geological past still readable in today’s scenery. Tenerife thus appears as a natural platform extending into the ocean, where the separation between terrestrial and marine environments is minimal.

This topography directly influences marine conditions. The waters surrounding Tenerife become deep just a short distance from the shore, creating an ideal environment for numerous cetacean species. Ocean currents, underwater canyons, and a relatively stable temperature year-round support one of the richest marine biodiversities in the Atlantic. Today, the area is recognized as one of the main observation points for marine mammals in Europe.

Among the most emblematic species in these waters are pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus), also known as blackfish. Despite their name, they are the largest representatives of the dolphin family, with individuals exceeding six meters in length. Their robust bodies and characteristic rounded foreheads make them immediately recognizable when surfacing.

What makes pilot whales particularly interesting from a scientific perspective is their extremely complex social structure. They live in stable, cohesive groups, often composed of dozens of individuals connected by lifelong relationships. Their society is predominantly matriarchal: the oldest females lead the group, preserving and transmitting essential knowledge for survival, such as feeding areas and hunting strategies.

Their ideal habitat consists of deep ocean waters, where seabeds drop rapidly, favoring the presence of squid, their primary food source. Tenerife offers particularly favorable conditions: the underwater canyons surrounding the island allow pilot whales to hunt at depth without straying far from the coast. Unlike many other cetacean species, those in the Canary Islands are resident, making them observable throughout the year.

Communication within the group occurs through a complex range of sounds, used both for echolocation and for maintaining social bonds. Each group develops distinctive vocal patterns, a sort of sound signature that reinforces collective identity. This makes pilot whales especially sensitive to acoustic pollution, one of the main threats to their survival.

Direct encounters with these animals create an impact that goes beyond mere naturalistic interest. Watching them move slowly, surface in synchrony, and care for their young conveys the image of a structured and aware community. The moment they break the surface, accompanied by the deep sound of their breath, creates an almost total suspension of time.

Emotionally, the experience is marked by a strong sense of respect and awareness. Feelings of wonder, humility, and gratitude arise from the perception of facing a form of intelligence adapted to an environment humans can only observe, not inhabit. At that moment, the sea ceases to be an indistinct space and becomes a living, complex, inhabited ecosystem.

Tenerife thus confirms itself not only as a tourist destination but as an open-air natural laboratory for understanding the relationship between the marine environment and human presence. Observing pilot whales in the island’s waters demonstrates how coexistence between human activities and wildlife is possible only through a delicate balance based on clear rules, scientific knowledge, and respect for natural limits.

This observation experience is also made possible by the work of specialized local operators, such as Monte Cristo Catamaran, a company in Tenerife that organizes tours dedicated to marine wildlife observation. Conducted in compliance with environmental regulations and the natural behavior of cetaceans, these activities exemplify how tourism can integrate with ocean ecosystem protection. The approach prioritizes responsible observation, maintaining proper distances and minimizing impact on pilot whales, transforming the excursion into an opportunity for education and awareness rather than a simple tourist attraction.

Indeed, encounters with these cetaceans are not experiences of consumption but of awareness. Approaching a resident species that depends directly on the quality of the marine ecosystem prompts reflection on humanity’s role in the oceans. Pilot whales, with their complex social structures and sensitivity to acoustic and environmental pollution, become living indicators of the sea’s health.

In this sense, respect for nature cannot be limited to the emotion of the moment but must translate into concrete practices: regulation of maritime traffic, responsible tourism, protection of deep habitats, and reduction of human impact on ocean ecosystems. Tenerife is a significant example of how the enhancement of the marine environment can go hand in hand with its protection, supported by scientific research and effective conservation policies.

The experience of encountering pilot whales leaves a mark that goes beyond personal memory. It provides a broader awareness: the ocean is not a space separate from humanity but a vital system of which we are part. Recognizing this interdependence means accepting a collective responsibility, affecting not only coastal communities but the entire balance of the planet.

In an era marked by climate change and growing pressure on marine resources, places like Tenerife acquire cultural and strategic value. Here, the sea is not merely a backdrop but a silent interlocutor that invites listening, respect, and a new form of relationship with nature, founded on knowledge and long-term protection.

By: Angela Milella

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About the Author

My name is Angela Milella, I am 27 years old, and I hold a degree in Law. I have a deep passion for nature, which has always guided my professional path. Specialized in environmental crimes, I am currently a PhD candidate at the University of Bari, where I focus on corporate sustainability, aiming to combine legal expertise with environmental awareness in a responsible and conscientious approach.