The wind forecast was no-good for a dolphin trip, so I really did think that yesterday’s trip was the last of 2009. But, Mother Nature surprised us and we had a New Year’s Eve dolphin trip! The seas were calm and the passengers excited (especially those with birthdays!). We headed out, keeping our eyes open. Then, we saw it. Well, we saw them. Bottlenose dolphins coming right at us! We soon realized that the dolphins were scattered all about. While this made it difficult to focus on any one group, it made the trip very exciting! The dolphins weren’t overly interested in the boat, so we decided to investigate a big splash just to the north. It turned out to be a spotted dolphin adult, juvenile and calf – and a bottlenose dolphin. After observing them from the boat, everyone put on their wetsuits and hopped in the water. I can’t wait to review the video. I really hope that visibility is good enough for me to identify the older juvenile spotted because I really did not recognize who it was! Could it be a new 
dolphin or, more likely, one who developed new spots this fall and I didn’t recognize at first?
The rest of the day included observing more bottlenose from the boat and a second group of 5 spotteds. One of these spotted dolphins had so many white spots it may have been the oldest spotted dolphin I have ever seen! I have lots of photographs of both species to sort through, including the adult spotted dolphin pictured above. Our trip went past sunset, which is not normal, but it meant we got to watch the New Year’s Eve blue moon rise!
I hope that 2010 is as good as 2009. Happy New Year to everyone!
Thanks for following,
Kel