After saying goodbye to the 2010 DCP DRTs, Friday was spent cleaning up and reorganizing. Saturday’s dolphin trip with Nowdla Keefe was a patience tester. By 19:00, we still had not seen any dolphins and many on the boat were giving up hope. But, the crew and I knew better; sometimes the dolphins make us wait and wait and just when we’re ready to give up, there they are! In that spirit, we first saw the dolphins at 19:16. At first, we observed a group of 5 adults, including Buster (#04) and Lumpy (#17).
Category: Bimini 2010
A clean beach, souvenirs and DOLPHINS!
Happy July! We had a great Thursday that began with a beach clean-up: we filled 3 trash bags in 20 min! In total, we filled 9.5 bags of trash and while we all felt good about removing the trash from the beach, we were also all a bit distressed by the need to have a beach trash clean-up.
Sharks, Snakes & Sea Creatures!
We had a very full Wednesday! We visited the Shark Lab and the Nature Trail on South Bimini in the morning and then went dolphin-researching/searching in the afternoon. Liam: Today we saw bottlenose dolphins instead of spotted dolphins and we got to go swimming with them. One had a baby with her and another one had no right pec fin and looked like Nemo, the spotted dolphin.
Bimini Museum, Snorkeling and Sting Rays!
Our morning began a bit earlier than previous days with breakfast followed by an historic-themed scavenger hunt. We visited the Bimini Museum to learn about Bimini’s history and to find information about the island. It was educational but quite fun. Our afternoon trip was shifted to the south and a voyage to Honeymoon Harbor to swim with sting rays. The sea was a bit rough for a dolphin survey. Bill: Today, we went swimming with sting rays and we could feed them and it felt like a vacuum on your fingers.
Barracuda, sharks and dolphins, oh my!
WE SAW DOLPHINS!!! But first, Monday morning included a mangrove tour that lasted about 2.5 hours. We saw many critters and really enjoyed the animals. The afternoon boat trip brought us dolphins! We spent about 1.5 hours watching the dolphins from the boat. We saw 3 dolphins first (Nemo (#78), Leslie (#80) and an un-ID adult) and then our group size grew to 10 individuals. We did not get to swim with the dolphins as they really just wanted to play with the boat.
Sun & Surf!
Sunday was a day filled in the water – lots and lots of water. We learned about the boat this morning and how to safely climb to the bow from the stern. We learned how to slip into the water from the boat and then how to pull ourselves back onto the boat. We did lots of snorkeling – from shore and from the boat. Jack: Liam, Sam, Athan, E and I all made a song about Bimini on the boat while we were searching for dolphins.
DRTs Arrive to Bimini!
Our day began at 3:30 am in Newark, NJ! By 10:45 am, we were waiting to clear Immigration and Customs on Bimini, The Bahamas! The following comments are from our DRT team: Ben: it’s a strange place – they do a lot of things differently than us.
Another windy day – with dolphins!
Wednesday’s boat trip began with another round of windy weather. The guests opted to have a nice snorkel stop off the beach, where the waters were calm. As headed toward the “dolphin grounds”, we wondered if we would be lucky enough to see dolphins early, yet again…. Then, there they were! Another large group was surfing the swells. We counted at least 20 dolphins, but the sea conditions made getting an accurate count difficult. There were many calves in the group and at one point, all the calves were suddenly synchrozing porpoising.
Hello Winds!
Monday greeted us with a bit of wind, but that didn’t stop us from heading in search of dolphins. We had to stay close to shore and partway through the afternoon, we took a break and the passengers were able to snorkel “The Bimini Road” (aka “Atlantis”). Afterwards, we were able to make one more loop to look for dolphins – and they found us! We got a great show of bowriding and saw Tina (#14) and Tilly (#87), among others, including a very young calf. Tuesday morning I spent about 90 minutes talking with this week’s passengers.
A strange, squall-y Father’s Day
Today’s boat trip was scheduled to depart at 1300; however, the squalls were also apparently scheduled for this time. As we waited for the bad weather to pass, I caught up on brainstorming and document editing. By 1600, we were finally given the go ahead to depart. We headed up the coast of Bimini, curious as to whether or not we would see dolphins before being driven home by the nasty weather. We were in luck! We saw dolphins quickly and the group size was well over a dozen.
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