Thursday morning began with a meeting between Kathleen and the film crew. While swimming with the bottlenose on Wednesday, the crew had heard an unusual vocalization that they asked Kathleen to take a look at. She was able to pull the section of audio to look at it on a spectrogram for a better understanding of the vocalization. Kathleen found the audio clip quite interesting and it has raised some new questions in her mind; it seems that DCP might have (yet another!) new research project in the near future!
The boat took off at 12:45 with everyone on board feeling quite optimistic after the successes of the day before. We set off in the same direction and searched….and searched….and searched. Three and a half hours later we were no longer feeling very confident when suddenly one of the passengers spotted a spotted dolphin off of the starboard side! Our luck had held true! We were able to observe these dolphins from the boat and underwater over the next three hours!
Throughout this time the group varied between 4-12 dolphins at once. The total group size was likely around 12 because we did see the same individuals repeatedly in multiple subgroups. Kathleen was able to ID Inka (#93) from the boat and there is a chance that Swoosh (#36) was also present. We will have to take a look at the underwater video that Kathleen collected to be sure. There were also a few individuals that we did not recognize but that have distinctive and permanent markings; hopefully they can be added to our catalog soon!
All in all, the day turned out to be a success. We arrived at the dock a bit later than usual but in good spirits yet again. Let’s hope the luck continues tomorrow!
Until next time,
Kathleen & Nicole