Smacked in the head
I had a special research trip this morning – together with Ichiro sensei and Nozomi chan. Instead of the usual 2 hours, we were out on the water for 3, which gave us much more time with each dolphin group. There were huge numbers of dolphins on the west side of the island socializing in the sizeable surf. I have over 45 minutes of video data. The visibility was pretty terrible – the red plankton is gone, but in its place is an army of jellyfish. Really strange, rarely seen cylindrical jellyfish – even Ichiro sensei had not seen them before. The water was literally so thick with jellyfish that they reduced visibility and made it difficult to swim. It was like swimming in the ball-pit at McDonalds… I have some great video of Kitte and Danberu playing together. In the above images, you can see Kitte getting smacked in the head with a fluke and both dolphins playfully biting each other . It is great fun when dolphins ignore the camera for a few moments and produce behavior like this! In other news, the rainy season has started in earnest now – today and tomorrow are going to be wet days. Let’s hope I get a few more trips like