Monday’s dolphin trips once again split up the DCP team. We are so grateful to the two Bimini dolphin operators who donate space to us. And the summer internship program allows DCP to be in two places at once! Kel headed out at 13:40 and the passengers enjoyed a nice relaxing snorkel stop at The Bimini Road (aka Atlantis) and then resumed looking for dolphins two hours later. Kel was lucky enough to coordinate a swim break with the location of the SM2M unit (see Sat 30 July’s post for details).
Category: Bimini 2011
Just as we felt like giving up, the dolphins come through!
On Sunday, the DCP team split up for double duty as Kel headed out with Sea Crest Hotel & Marina just minutes before Sabena and Alexis headed out with Bimini Undersea.
A fitting farewell to one of our interns!
Friday was an eventful day for DCP! The day began with a beach cleanup on North Bimini sponsored by DCP Conservation Member Chris Ribic. We collected over 11 bags of trash in less than 1 hour! These clean ups at our Bimini, The Bahamas field site allow us to give back to the community that not only welcomes us as individuals, but has been kindly welcoming DCP over the past decade. And of course we are very pleased to get some trash off the coastline and hopefully prevent it from ending up in the sea.
Interns take the lead!
On Wednesday morning, the interns were picked up by boat to get to the Coral Reef II, the Shedd Aquarium’s research vessel, to give DCP’s fourth talk of the summer, this time to Shedd’s Teacher Field Experience participants. All three of us introduced ourselves before Alexis gave an introduction to DCP, our research methodologies, and interesting facts about the dolphins we study.
Another boat & data day
Saturday began with a casual meeting to go over the DCP presentation that the interns will give to the Shedd Aquarium’s Teacher Field Experience early next week. It was a great way to remind or introduce dolphin facts and Bimini anecdotes to the team. As the interns continued to work on data projects – today included bottlenose ID and pectoral fin event sampling – Kel left on the final dolphin trip of the week. The human group was small and so was the dolphin group, but we all enjoyed the surfing show given by four bottlenose dolphins.
Rain, Rain, Go Away…..Oh, wow. Thanks.
Friday morning (whoa, wait…it’s Friday already?) brought all four of us together as we began logging Bimini video data for individual IDs. This involves going through the video and marking, sometimes frame by frame, which individual dolphin(s) are in view. It’s a slow process, but makes all future research efforts much more efficient. And it’s oh so rewarding for dolphin geeks like us!
The afternoon brought more data entry and photo-ID for the interns while Kel headed out as an observer on a dolphin trip.
A Mother’s Club?
Though the interns didn’t have a dolphin trip on Thursday, they still managed to fill up their day with DCP activities, and Brittany and Sabena even managed to squeeze in a SCUBA dive! They got up bright and early to meet the Bimini Undersea dive crew in order to gear up and get fitted. The boat headed out at about 0900 and soon they reached their first dive site, the Bimini Barge, which is an amazing 90 foot ship wreck dive! After a rest period, the boat headed to the next dive site, Turtle Rock, where Sabena and Brittany were
Three’s not a crowd on Bimini
On Wednesday, DCP’s third 2011 summer intern, Sabena, joined Alexis and Brittany in Bimini. Sabena had the opportunity to explore the terrestrial part of the island on a bike ride and also experienced the marine environment during a swim off the beach. Later in the day, after she settled in, Sabena began her first day of office work. She spent a few hours on the new DCP field laptop learning how to enter the Bimini sighting data that we record from our dolphin trips.
A day for the record books
Tuesday was a well-earned day off for Brittany and Alexis. They spent the day resting, hanging at the beach and exploring the island, by bike and on foot.
Kel got called on a last minute dolphin trip with Bimini Undersea. Thankfully the mild effects of Tropical Storm Brett on Sunday night had fully subsided and these seas were once again flat, flat, flat. The boat passengers were fantastic, asking great questions and spotting the dolphins! At first we only saw a few, but we quickly realized that were in the midst of a very large group of dolphins.
A DCP Talk At Sea!
On Monday morning, we were picked up by boat and chauffeured to the Coral Reef II, the Shedd Aquarium’s research vessel, to give our second talk of the month to Shedd’s High School Marine Biology program. We shared a little about DCP and the research conducted out here on Bimini with the students.
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