Sunday and Monday brought several thunderstorms and rough seas, which in turn meant canceled boat trips.
Saturday began relatively early for us as we boarded the Coral Reef II to talk to students from the Chicago City Day School. The group was a bit tired as they had just made their passing to Bimini during the night, but once Kel started talking about DCP's interesting research and the amazing facts about Bimini's dolphins, you could see the students perk up! Lauren and Alexis chimed in with facts about lifespan, age class, and focal follow methodology, as well as answering some of the students’ pertinent questions, especially in regards to volunteer and internship opportunities.
Thursday began on a low note as Amy left to return home, and we were all sad to see the intern trio go down to two. Our boat trip started off looking very similar to Wednesday, with around three hours passing before seeing any sign of life out on the water. Finally around 18:00 we ran into 3 bottlenose dolphins, who were moving about inconsistently and showing no interest in the boat. After watching them for ten minutes, we decided to move on, hopeful that we would find a more playful group.
Wednesday’s trip was a big trip for us. We were fortunate enough to have Kel join all three interns on the boat and it was also Amy’s very last boat trip for the season, as she was heading back to the States to finish the office portion of the internship. So we headed out with high hopes. It was a hot day, so after we had been out for about an hour everyone agreed a swim break was completely and utterly necessary.
Tuesday began with a beach cleanup for the Bimini team! We collected 10 garbage bags and 2 recycling bags worth of trash around the south tip of North Bimini. It was a great way for us to give back to the island by means of leaving it cleaner than when we found it!
In the afternoon the interns went out on another boat trip with Bimini Adventures (again thanks to the donations of those supporting DCP).
Monday was another perfect day on the water for the interns; we secured research spaces with Bimini Adventures thanks to the generous donations of DCP supporters! Much like yesterday, we sighted a group of crater feeding bottlenose dolphins not long after leaving the dock. They seemed very busy at work, so we passed by with the hope of finding a more interactive group. At 16:15 we were victorious, meeting up with at least 20 very playful Atlantic spotted dolphins.
Sunday’s dolphin trip was what seemed to be off to a great start when we spotted a small group of bottlenose dolphins in 15 minutes of departing! The group of roughly five bottlenose dolphins was right off of North Bimini, and the passengers were able to have a brief encounter with them. The dolphins were much more interested in crater feeding than interacting with us, and the current was very strong so staying with the dolphins became difficult. After deciding to move on we unfortunately did not see any more dolphins.
Saturday began with a day off for the interns. So as the trio slept in and enjoyed a bit of a lazy morning, Kel was prepping for a trip with Bimini Adventures. To everyone’s surprise, we received an email around noon stating Bimini Undersea was also going out on a trip today and kindly offered spots to the interns! We were delighted to hear this and scraped our day off for another work day and a boat trip!
Kel departed around 13:00 and fairly soon after we found 3 eagle rays swimming quickly.
With no boat trip on Friday the interns were able to finally catch up on some more data analysis. The day was full of identifying dolphins. We are all very excited to announce that we have a new dolphin confirmed in our catalog, ID#104! This male spotted dolphin is the calf of Swoosh (#36) and although we have been following him for several years, he only became recognizable by his spot pattern last year. On his right side there are three spots (like Orion’s belt), as well as a small nick in his dorsal fin.
It was another exciting day on the water for DCP researchers! Kel and the Parallax Film Productions crew got an early start. During a swim break, we were visited by a group of at least 10 spotted dolphins. We hopped in the water quickly and were pleased that two mother/calf pairs stuck around: Lil' Jess (#35) and her female calf and un-named #70 and hers.