Category: Bimini

    This week’s group is very excited about the days ahead—which makes us excited too! Today they arrived and we met as a group prior to boat departure to go over introductions, history, expectations and boat safety. Then, we were off! About two hours into the trip, we saw splashes in the distance and found a group of 8 spotteds. A mixed age group, they seemed to be traveling, but did let us in the water for a few minutes.

 Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with us again on Wednesday. Both our morning and afternoon trips did go out however, leaving us looking and feeling like drowned rats. We saw one bottlenose, but no spotteds.
    Things looked up a bit on Thursday weather-wise and we did see a group of six spotteds in the morning and had two short encounters with them. We recognized #1 (!) and #77. We have ideas of who some others are, but we have to wait until we get a better look at the video, albeit brief footage.

Yesterday we did our weekly dolphin discussion with our passengers. Again, we were pleased to see the interest people have in the dolphins and DCP’s research. Folks asked great questions and really seemed to enjoy “meeting” the individual dolphins in our catalog and discovery different ways to identify each of them. Out on the boat in the afternoon we were able to see some spotted dolphins, but they seemed to be traveling, so we were only able to get in the water briefly.

Sunday afternoon was spent doing “meet and greets” and getting to know this week’s passengers. This week is a great family week- one family from England, one from Florida, a couple from Tokyo (who have been swimming with the Mikura dolphins!!) and then some passengers from up North. Today was the season’s 15 trip and we first saw a group of 16 bottlenose dolphins soon out of the harbor.

Despite our eagerness to get out on the water, there were no dolphin trips this week. So, we spent the week introducing Justin to the exciting world of video logging as we were able to complete all 4.5 hours of footage from Dolphin Encounters in Nassau. It was a bit different from logging the wild footage—sometimes a bit easier since there was never more than 5 dolphins in any given pool session, compared to the sometimes 20 animals here in Bimini.

Hello everyone – a special first report from Justin Gregg. I’ve just arrived here on Bimini following a harrowing but exciting seaplane trip – my first! I’ll be here for one month learning all I can about the research being conducted in Bimini by Kathy and Kelly for DCP. Bimini is great so far – very hot and very relaxed; a big change from where I live in the bustling city of Dublin over in Ireland. It took me all of 10 minutes to receive my first sunburn.

After an eight-day hiatus from the open ocean, I (Kelly) was able to get back out on Destiny and see the wild Atlantic spotted dolphins again. We spent over one hour and twenty minutes with a lone spotted who was unfortunately recovering from an injury. We can’t be sure what the injury was from exactly, but it looked like it could have been from a fishing hook. We also couldn’t readily identify the animal, but it seemed to be doing well, despite its wound.

  Our time at Dolphin Encounters was a success!!!! We were able to record ambient noise 3 times a day in each of the 5 pools, came away with 4.5 hours of underwater video and over 100 digital ID photographs—a very productive three days and a big change from our usual routine. We awoke each morning at 6 a.m. and returned to our hotel around 7 p.m., unlike our schedule in Bimini where our work day begins at 2 p.m. and ends at 9 p.m.

We arrived at Dolphin Encounters (DE) in Nassau, Bahamas, with camera and hydrophone in hand, not knowing exactly what to expect. This was DCP’s first time working with this facility and we were sent in on behalf of DCP and Mystic Aquarium. It worked out well, considering Bimini’s proximity to Nassau and provided us, as research interns, with exposure to a different type of field work. Joining us this week is another intern, Kristine Sonstrom, who has been working with Dr. Peter Scheifele from the University of Connecticut.

Although we did not come off the boat with much MVA1 video footage, we were able to confirm that White Blotch (#29) is indeed pregnant! This is a good sign as we believe she lost her one year old calf last year. By the looks of things, she may give birth before the summer is through. In 2001, when she had her last calf, she was kind enough to come by the boat to show DCP researchers her 10 day old baby.