No Dolphins, but We Found Lots of Rain!

 

The DCP team woke up early Tuesday morning. After breakfast (and Mathew’s first bowl of cereal since arriving on Bimini—it sounds trivial but it is quite an exciting treat!), we set to working on data entry and photo-ID. It was nice to have another morning where we would focus on identifying bottlenose dolphins from previous years. We hit a milestone by fully completing files from four days of surface photographs, and derived a great level of satisfaction from doing so. 

 

After lunch, the boat departed at 3 PM and we were almost immediately confronted by a large swell that tested the stomachs of a few of our guests. Unfortunately, we did not spot dolphins of any type during this trip, and the most exciting part was outrunning a storm that was on our tail. Though it was temporarily amusing to watch the people on the bow getting drenched by the waves, the stinging rain and “freezing” winds rapidly grew tiresome. We returned to the docks a bit early and the DCP team spent the remainder of the day continuing office tasks including photo-ID and data entry. Wednesday, we will be visiting the shark lab and, hopefully, swimming with sharks and rays. It promises to be an exciting day and we can’t wait to let you know how it goes! 

 

Until tomorrow,

Garion, Mathew, Kel & Nicole