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 ...
Garion woke up this morning and had a hearty breakfast of bagels and leftover chicken burrito (Yum!). He and Mathew then went for a bike ride and Garion showed Mathew a bit of the island based off what he could remember from his tour with Nicole. They then went grocery shopping and biked home.
On Monday, DCP welcomed its first-ever Volunteer Field Experience participants, Garion and Mathew! We are very excited to offer this opportunity this year and are eager to make the most of the volunteers’ 12 days on Bimini. For their first blog post, Garion and Mathew wrote about their travels to Bimini. Tune in over the next 2 weeks to hear about the rest of their experiences!
Garion:
I woke up at 3 AM on Monday to begin my journey from my home in Stuart, Florida to Bimini, The Bahamas.
Wow, did that Sacred Heart University program fly by! On Tuesday, we had some group class time and visited the Bimini Museum. We broke into teams and had an information “scavenger hunt,” searching for the answers to questions that DCP provided. We let our friendly competitive streaks come out before heading back for lunch and our dolphin trip!
The weather conditions continued to be challenging, Still, we were able to stop at “The Bimini Road” (aka “Atlantis” or “Road to Atlantis”).
On Monday we woke up early, nervous and excited about meeting the sharks – but soon after we left the dock, we saw a huge storm coming ahead. We were getting more nervous: sharks and lightning! We turned back toward home, stopping briefly to snorkel at “Shell Beach.” We saw an eagle ray, a blue tang, a barracuda, lots of parrotfish and lots of little transparent, white jellyfish. Only about 15 minutes after we got in the water, Captain Al called us back to the boat. The storm was moving too fast. We made it back to the dock….nearly.