On Friday, after breakfast, we discussed last night’s movie, “Who Bought A Zoo.” The conversation specifically about the movie didn’t last long, but we were soon discussing the ethics surrounding decisions about zoos & aquariums.
Saturday started off like other days (oh, poor us!) with breakfast, our field report and our discussion on last night’s movie, DOLPHINS. This led us to discussing the humans impacts facing dolphins: general pollution, including mercury, noise pollution, over fishing and more. People care about individual animals, but we need to think about conservation as a whole.
Thursday morning was fitness time for some of us, with yoga and exercises on the beach. Not a bad view for a workout! Then it was the routine of breakfast and class. We were visited by Skype by Dr. Dudzinski. Her lecture was on bioacoustics. We found her to be a good teacher, adding anecdotes to the physics of sounds. There was a lot of discussion on noise pollution and what the difference between sound and noise is.
On Wednesday, we learned that we would not be able to go on our first boat trip because of wind. This was disappointing, but heck, we’re still in The Bahamas! In the morning, we discussed ecotourism; we probably could have talked about this all day! But, we know we’ll be experiencing the Bimini environment first hand, and reading about ecotourism, so we know we’ll have a larger discussion next week.
On Monday, we were in full preparation mode. The island was slowly quieting, but our busy week was just beginning. On Tuesday afternoon we welcomed this year's Sacred Heart University (SHU) field course! Led by Dr. Deirdre Yeater, this year's group is a mix of SHU & Eckerd College students. We know it will be a fantastic program and we hope you enjoy all of the student-written field reports. The first one starts below! ~Kel & Nicole
We all met for the first time at the Fort Lauderdale Airport.
On Friday morning, Kathleen and Kel met up with the film crew to finish with interviews and last-minute details. Around mid-day, Kel and Nicole bade farewell to Kathleen who headed back to the states. It was not a sad farewell, though, because we will be seeing her again in June!
We got a bit of a late start on the boat in the afternoon because of some camera trouble but we were able to set off a bit before 2 pm. After about an hour of searching, we came across a group of about 3 bottlenose dolphins.
Though our time with “The Giants” film crew was scheduled to end on Friday, the team requested an extra morning trip on Saturday. Bimini Adventures and DCP were happy to oblige! After collecting fresh SCUBA tanks, we departed the busy Bimini harbor shortly after 9 a.m.
Monday was a busy day! While Kel prepped for the boat trip, Nicole departed Connecticut and met Kathleen at Fort Lauderdale International Airport. The wind continued to make for challenging dolphin searching, but Kathleen & Nicole still arrived on Bimini reasonably on time (despite an unruly passenger and an aborted landing!). At sea, it was more searching (and searching). But, we didn’t have to wait too long before coming upon a group of bottlenose dolphins.
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.
The weather has continued to be unseasonably challenging here in Bimini. Still, we continued our search for dolphins on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday we saw bottlenose dolphins, but as with previous sightings they were on the move and showed no interest in changing their plans. Their movements combined with the rough seas made getting still photos nearly impossible. Still, I hope we’ll be able to identify at least one or two individuals. On Thursday, we spent a fair bit of time following two adult Atlantic spotted dolphins.