On Wednesday, DCP’s third 2011 summer intern, Sabena, joined Alexis and Brittany in Bimini. Sabena had the opportunity to explore the terrestrial part of the island on a bike ride and also experienced the marine environment during a swim off the beach. Later in the day, after she settled in, Sabena began her first day of office work. She spent a few hours on the new DCP field laptop learning how to enter the Bimini sighting data that we record from our dolphin trips. She is really ecstatic about her arrival in Bimini and her escape from her landlocked home in Indiana. Sabena is eagerly awaiting her first encounter with the dolphins and field research including use of DCP’s new GPS, which the other two interns have been able to get very comfortable with the past 2 weeks.
You might be wondering how DCP was able to acquire the new field equipment! Thanks to a grant from Pfizer, DCP was able to purchase these much needed
supplies for our intern and volunteer programs. We were even able to upgrade a few things back at the Connecticut office. Thank you very much Pfizer! We look forward to putting this equipment to good use.
Brittany and Alexis spent much of their morning anticipating their fellow intern’s arrival, they also entered data to the sighting file, as well as worked on identifying 2011 spotted dolphin still-photos. Later in the day, they spent time working on updating Bimini’s bottlenose catalog and already have over 50 bottlenose since 2009. We all look forward to the next couple of days together and the possibility of a dolphin trip to come soon!
Until then,
Sabena, Alexis, Brittany & Kel