Everyone arrived as expected and arrived to AKR in the early afternoon. The sunshine and breeze met us on after we got off the shuttle and welcomes to the resort. Bill and Don helped me get the MVA case from RIMS while Felicia and Morgan checked out their cabana. Marie’s flight was the last to arrive and we connected with her just before and over dinner. It was an early night for everyone given the different travel lengths.
I was able to get over to Bailey’s Key to say hi to the trainers and check out the dolphins … and say hi to them. Ronnie, Stan, Lenca, Mr. French are all relatively clean of rake marks. I’ll need to rely on their permanent markings to recognize them underwater. Champ and the other young males have rake marks. I learned that Georgie, Kami and Gizmo had been playing with Buzz, Rocky, and Tank near the shallows and got a bit scraped up. Sandy has mostly healed rake/social marks on her back (featured photo). And Kami’s scrapes are mostly healed also (see below).
It was good to see everyone! Tomorrow we’ve scheduled data collection for ~6:45 AM. And, I’ll have time to introduce Marie, Morgan, and Felicia to our data collection protocol and start chatting about various research topics and details.
Cheers
Kathleen and DCP’s October 2025 ecotour team: Don, Bill, Marie, Morgan, & Felicia