Category: Roatan 2010

We started the morning early again … Kathleen was in the water at 6:37 am. The dolphins were VERY active this morning and we recorded lots of surface behavior. There was much rolling and various body parts splashed about at the surface. It was also our very first fully sunny day! That is, no clouds really to speak of, which led most of us to get a bit of sunburn.

Another early morning data collection session – an hour today with awesome underwater visibility (10 m plus) and very social, interactive dolphins. All four young calves were given the opportunity to inspect Kathleen and her green camera … with each mom hanging in the background so the calves did not get too close for too long. Actually, the dolphins might have requested Amanda’s clipboard so that they could document their observations of Kathleen. With their rostrums, the dolphins attempted to flip the clipboard over after it slipped into the sea and inadvertently tasted the data sheets.

Wednesday was jam packed with activities – all involved formal and informal behavior observations and lots of time in the water. We collected data from the surface while Kathleen collected data underwater during the early morning session.

We woke to an odd sound … almost silence. The wind had died. The clouds were ever-present but not yet leaking. So, we conducted our first set of surface behavior observations of the four mother/calf pairs, and a few other dolphins.

Each student has to complete a small independent project with their literature review and so each is collecting data on a particular question.

Sarah: I am looking at individual differences in mother attentiveness to their calves during training sessions.

The weather report predicts clouds, rain and wind for most of the week. Still, this did not deter our behavioral observations! Our morning was spent discussing altruism, reciprocal altruism, and social complexity. Our swim with the dolphins was postponed until later in the week because the current was too strong to stand much less swim with ease among the dolphins. Even though it was windy and rainy, our research team began preliminary observations during the noon training session.

We woke to crashing waves and strong winds. The waves were washing over the mangrove roots near our cabins, and our cabins are on the east side of Anthony’s Key … the leeward side during the tropical storm that punched through last night to tonight. Not lots of rain, but lots of wind and seas that were crashing over the reef to the northwest of Anthony’s Key.

The underwater visibility was a bit more silty than yesterday and the cloud cover a bit thicker. Still, the dolphins were vocal and interactive. They were playful and rambunctious and spent much time 
circling Kathleen as if they were sharks. Or at least their fins were suggestive of sharks. Fiona brought sea weed to everyone in another attempt to distract our team from the research. She had more than a human audience … a tern was tight-rope walking just under the dock, eyeballing the bait fish … and Fiona.

The day dawned behind a giant black cloud but it only drizzled a tad bit while Kathleen was in the water between 6:30 and 7 AM. The morning data session yielded 30 min of video and the dolphins were VERY curious and swarmed Kathleen during her session.

Today began REALLY early for all of us! Packing of gear and assorted equipment was finished a mere 8 hours prior to departure to the airport. Good thing lists are handy. DCP’s time on Roatan at AKR studying the dolphins at RIMS is just about 2.5 weeks this month. The first ten days will include four college students representing three schools; they are participating in DCP’s first Animal Behavior College Course. These students will assist with data collection for DCP, spend time learning about animal behavior, communication and cognition, and work on their own limited-scope project.