Trip 17 brought some interesting observations, though not much in the way of video. First a group bottlenose about ten minutes after leaving the dock, in the same place we'd seen the spotteds in the shallows the night before. Though not very interested in the boat, they let us follow them for a while, watching them feed.
Out on the dolphin grounds, we came across a group of 4 young, unmarked spotted calves and one adult, in a babysitting situation. The calves had their fun in our wake, but wandered off as soon as passengers entered the water.
Saw some more bottlenose feeding in deeper water with an audience of nurse sharks waiting patiently for scraps. Passengers were able to swim with them briefly while they were busy not paying attention to us, but slowly wandered off.
Back in the 'lab,' we've made some major headway on the Bimini ID catalogue, going through IDs from the past two years and crossing them with some IDs from the Wild Dolphin Project. We're up to about 70 different animals in these waters, according to 3 years of data.
Until next time
Kelly and Kathy