news&views Summer 2021 | Page 46

Team Building with Whales

Lorianne Tenove | Article . Photos by Dafne Neve
It has been a little over a year that I have been with my team , and at the end of the day , boy , for people who did not know each other a year ago , have we gone through a lot .
Apart from the pandemic , there has been tremendous job stress , tragedy , economic and health stress , as well as the challenge of understanding and learning how to do things differently . But there has also been incredible fellowship , support , laughter , love , and dedication to our cause to make this school the best ever .
And so , it was time to do some more team building .
This is the time of year that the humpback whales start hanging around in Mazatlán . Although my colleagues have lived all of their lives in Mazatlán , they had never gone on a whale-watching trip .
What better way to celebrate our wonderful team than embark on a fourhour tour out on the ocean searching for these gargantuan cetaceans . Just for reference , humpback whales weigh , on average , forty tonnes and can grow to be nineteen metres long . They are massive and known to be friendly but dangerous because of their size .
We rented our own boat with a captain and a bilingual marine biologist . We were a party of eight ,
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