Dolphin watching from Morro Jable: why the island’s most-reviewed trip only scores 4.2

The two-hour dolphin and whale watching boat trip from Morro Jable is the most-reviewed single tour on Fuerteventura: 5,142 reviews at €49. It is also the weakest of the island’s six most-booked tours. It scores 4.2 stars, while the other five sit between 4.5 and 4.8.

That is not a contradiction. It is one and the same fact, seen from two sides.

The arithmetic behind those 4.2 stars

The whale and dolphin watching category holds ten offers, from €40, median €75, and 9,052 reviews between them. More than half of those belong to this one boat. At €49 it sits well below the median of its own category, and below the island-wide median of €69 across 190 offers starting at €12.50.

Cheap, short, right there on the doorstep: that mix is exactly what turns a tour into the most-booked one, and it also spreads buyers’ expectations further than any other. Anyone spending €49 on two hours decides in passing, and a decision made in passing rarely gets as far as the end of the description.

The five tours it is measured against all sell a fixed object: a ticket to a wildlife park, two crossings to Isla de Lobos, two trips out to Cofete. A ferry can leave late, but it cannot fail to turn up. This boat sells an animal that belongs to nobody.

An operator who holds out the prospect of sightings is promising something he cannot deliver. The disappointed review that follows is not wrong. It is simply measuring something other than the trip.

What is realistically in the water off Jandía

The operator says exactly one sentence about this trip: “Experience dolphins, whales and other marine life up close on a boat departing from Morro Jable. All drinks and a swim stop are included.” Which animals are meant is not stated anywhere.

There are three main candidates. The bottlenose dolphin lives in Canarian waters all year round and is the species most likely to come to the bow of its own accord. The short-finned pilot whale, calderón tropical in Spanish, is resident too and therefore not tied to a season; it often lies quietly at the surface rather than leaping, which some guests file under “saw nothing”. The Atlantic spotted dolphin turns up more regularly between April and October. Add common dolphins, rough-toothed dolphins and, far less often and usually well offshore, beaked whales.

The basis for all this is geography, not marketing. Fuerteventura has the widest shelf of the Canary Islands, and as the island closest to Africa it shares both water and species with the African coast. Of the 27 whale and dolphin species recorded in the Canaries, 22 are documented in Fuerteventura’s waters. Since 26 May 2009 the entire island has been a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, including a marine strip of five nautical miles along the western sector and three nautical miles around the rest of the perimeter, some 188,700 hectares of sea in total and therefore more area than the land itself. Off the south coast there is also the marine protection zone Playas de Sotavento de Jandía.

What does not follow from any of it: that you will see something on one particular morning. Some operators advertise sighting rates. Those are their own figures, and not one of them has been independently verified.

Two hours are two hours

The harbour at Morro Jable does three jobs at once. It is a fishing harbour with its own cofradía, a marina with 290 berths for vessels up to 35 metres, and the ferry port for the link to Las Palmas, a good 60 nautical miles in about two hours. The entrance channel carries roughly nine metres of water, the basin around five. Your boat has to work its way out between the ferry ramp and the fishing fleet before anything else happens.

After that there is no slack in the schedule. If the boat runs out for half an hour, it needs half an hour back, and everything has to happen in the hour in between: searching, closing in, keeping the required distance, waiting, and then the swim stop on top. Two hours is a search along the coast, not an expedition into the channel between the islands.

If you want the longer version, you have to change category. Catamaran trips and sailing trips with a snorkelling stop typically run two to four times as long and cost accordingly. Which type of boat suits whom is covered in which tour is right for you, and the price ranges in how much tours on Fuerteventura cost.

“Swimming” means the swim stop, not swimming with dolphins

This is probably the most expensive misunderstanding attached to the trip, and legally it is not ambiguous. Spain’s Real Decreto 1727/2007 places an exclusion zone of 60 metres around every whale and every group of dolphins. Around that lies a restricted-presence zone out to 300 metres, and around that an approach zone out to 500 metres. Swimming with whales and dolphins is prohibited, so is feeding them, and so is cutting across their path. The engine must not be started while animals are closer than 60 metres to the boat.

In the Canaries there is a visible marker on top of that. Under Decreto 178/2000, licensed boats fly the “Barco Azul” flag: yellow, 80 × 50 centimetres, with the period of the permit in blue figures. It is either visible on board or it is not, and checking takes five seconds on the quay.

So anyone who booked in order to swim with dolphins had the wrong tour in the basket. The swim stop takes place at a sheltered spot, without animals. The review that follows is honest and still lands on the wrong target.

The swim stop depends on the sea, not on the programme

It is in the title, yet it is the first thing to be dropped. In any swell nobody goes into the water, and the skipper decides that at short notice, not the booking page. Morro Jable lies in the lee of the Jandía ridge and is often calmer than the north when the north-easterly blows hard, but that shelter ends at the headland. How this works and when trips are called off is set out in boat trips in wind and swell, and which months deliver what in the best time to visit.

On sickness aboard this article gives no advice at all. What helps and what does not belongs in a pharmacy or a doctor’s surgery, and that goes double for children: seasickness in children.

From Corralejo this is not a half-day outing

Corralejo and Morro Jable are 111 road kilometres apart. By car that is around 1 hour 40 each way, by bus considerably more, because there is no direct service: first to Puerto del Rosario, then change to line 10, which needs about 92 minutes for its full route. So two hours on the water put six to eight hours of travel on the other side of the ledger. What works without your own car is covered in Fuerteventura without a car.

If you are staying in Costa Calma, Jandía or Morro Jable itself, the argument turns around. Then it is the most obvious boat trip there is, and €49 is a fair price for the south. If you are based in the north, the run out to Lobos is the more honest choice, and further ideas are listed under things to do on Fuerteventura.

What to settle before you book

This article names no minimum age, because there is none that applies to all of them. Operators set different limits, and those are stated on the individual booking page. How to check that for children is covered in boat trips with kids and the minimum age.

That single operator sentence leaves everything else equally open: departure times, type of boat, group size, whether and how the swim stop is supervised. Ask before you pay, and read the cancellation terms of your specific booking rather than the general rule.

When not to book it

Not when you need a sighting to save the day. Not on the last day of the holiday, because a cancellation on account of the sea leaves no replacement date. Not as a day trip out of Corralejo with two children in the car who are being asked to sit through three and a half hours of driving for two hours of boat. Not when what is really in the basket is the wish to swim with dolphins.

And not if you take 4.2 stars for a verdict on quality. What that score largely measures here is the gap between the advertising and the Atlantic. Go aboard expecting two hours on the water and perhaps a group of pilot whales, and €49 buys you precisely that.