The sun greeted us today (7 Jan 2020)! It was a welcome site after 1.5 days of wind, rain and more wind and rain, as well as choppy seas and waves. The divers in our group had to be ready by 7:30 for their first boat dive as the boats were still on the west side of Roatan. So, it was Manon and Rachel for surface observations with Madison and Jeff assisting for the first ~half of the session this morning. The current was less than Sunday morning (but still gave me a good workout!) and the underwater visibility was AWESOME! I was able to see everyone (i.e., dolphins) underwater … even at 7+ meters away. There was much socializing and several individuals had new rake marks suggesting some play and social activity over the last 1-2 days, even with the choppy seas and stormy skies.
I was able to get in for two sessions today – one early AM (see above) and one just at noon. For the latter session, the adult males we involved in an action swim so I only had the adult females and juvenile males and females in the main lagoon. The underwater vis was still really good! And, I was able to observe some low-level social activity among the adult females and the typical juvenile play between Dory, Stan, and Tank. It was really nice to have a bright sunny day for data collection … even if the camera had a bit of difficulty with the white balance and brightness.
Tomorrow is supposed to be another good day … hoping the rain holds off and we can collect more space-use data and underwater video data.
Cheers
Kathleen & DCP’s eco-tour group (Ron, Bill, Manon, Rachel, John, Madison & Jeff)