Thursday morning began with Garion, Mathew and Nicole joining Dr. Kaplan, Dr. Maust-Mohl and the Hunter/Manhattan College students for a beach cleanup on Radio Beach in Alice Town. DCP feels it is important for students and island guests to gain an understanding and appreciation of the natural environment and community on Bimini, not just the dolphins that live in its waters. Picking up trash along the beach is a great way to give back to the community that has provided so many wonderful experiences over the past two weeks.
On Wednesday morning, the DCP team went about our normal morning routines to prepare for the day. We spent the morning tackling photo ID’s, data entry, and field reports and tried to be as productive as possible before Mathew visited the Bimini Biological Field Station (i.e. the SharkLab) on South Bimini for a tour with some of the Hunter/Manhattan College students.
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.
The DCP team slept in on Monday by about an hour; something about active dolphin research must make us all very tired. But after a slow start, we began data entry and photo ID’s, and got a considerable amount of work done. Unfortunately, our boat trip was canceled due to large swell and strong winds, so the day was largely left open for the researchers and students that are currently on island.
Sunday started out as a storm. Not a metaphorical storm of work and effort but a literal one. We stayed inside the majority of the morning, like most other mornings, working on our photo IDs. Mathew also uploaded his GoPro footage from Saturday’s trip (from our swim with crater feeding bottlenose dolphins).
The afternoon was unusual because headed to the boat for what we thought was an early departure, but just as we were going to leave, Captain Al told us that we would be waiting 15-40 minutes for a large squall to pass.
Saturday morning we awoke to a rain storm that lasted well into the afternoon. Being “forced” to stay indoors provided the DCP team plenty of time to work on photo IDs, data entry, and field reports. Unfortunately, the presentation we expected to give to the Chicago County Day School students aboard the Coral Reef II was canceled due to poor weather.
Friday was an exceptional day. Mathew began his day with a trip to the grocery store, to save himself from the past four days of ramen. Good thing the store had bread so he can make toast! Garion and Nicole also took advantage of the recent grocery delivery (the barge only comes to Bimini once a week!) and picked up some fresh produce.
Early in the morning on Thursday, the Bimini team woke up and accomplished a few hours of data entry and photo-ID work. We ate lunch together and then left for the docks to go on the boat trip for the day, departing an hour earlier than normal at 2 PM. At precisely 3:17 PM a group of 16 bottlenose dolphins was spotted just to the left of the bow. Garion jumped up so quickly that he almost forgot to start logging data for the sighting. A few minutes later, Kel, Dr. Kaplan, Dr.
Wednesday was a fine day. Mathew woke up and went for a brief walk along the coast to take in that lovely Bimini morning breeze. He and Garion then filled their morning working on data entry. Nicole gave them a brief explanation about how to sort through photos of the bottlenose dolphins found around Bimini. Shortly afterwards, Mathew and Garion joined the Hunter/Manhattan College group to watch an organized photo ID lecture with Kel. It was a ton of fun and everyone participated and learned a lot from it.
The DCP summer interns (Tori, Kaiya & Patrick) have been with Kathleen in the Florida office since mid-May learning about data analyses (video processing, confirming dolphin IDs, event sampling for behaviors and more). They depart at the end of June for Bimini to help Kel collect data on the Atlantic spotted and bottlenose dolphins around Bimini, The Bahamas. But, before they cross the Gulf Stream for clear blue waters, they needed to learn how to handle the MVA and gain some tips on collecting video and still photos underwater. You can see they all did well ...