Beautiful day with lots of dolphins

Our trip today was full of guests and luckily also full of dolphins. We had our first sighting at 1710 in the distance. As we got closer we realized we had at least 8 bottlenose dolphins. They appeared to be sticking around so at 1716 Vicki hopped in and took some pictures while Kel took dorsal shots from the boat and Alexis recorded sighting data. We stayed around until 1728 when we decided to go searching for some Atlantic spotted dolphins. Luckily for us, we found a group at 1730 very close by, including Romeo (#10), Swoosh (#36), and Leslie (#80). This group was very spread out swimming all around the boat. We had at least 8 dolphins all around us, in addition to the bottlenose still visible to the west. We decided to try to swim with the spotteds, hoping they would stick around for us. After we got in it appeared that the dolphins just weren’t ready for us yet, so we jumped back on the boat. At 1755 before we decided to head back to the bottlenose, we saw Finn (#09), in addition to Romeo (#10), Swoosh (#36) with her male calf (pictured here) and another adult and calf. At 1815 2 large bottlenose swam around the boat for 6 minutes before we left them and tried one more time for the spotteds. As we headed back towards the other group of dolphins we caught sight of about 6 spotteds at 1823. Then at 1829 Kel, Vicki, Bimini 2009_T43_Swoosh and calfand Alexis, all jumped back in the ocean. Alexis and Vicki took still photos, while Kel recorded video for about 15 minutes. Kel even got great video of an adult female we didn’t recognize. After this last encounter with the dolphins it was about time to head back home, so we turned the boat around and headed back for shore. It was quite a successful day and now we have a day off before *hopefully* our next boat trip on Saturday.

So, until then, 

Alexis, Vicki, and Kel