A Morning Boat Trip

On the water at 9:00 am. Dolphins at 9:15 am, and regularly during the 2 hr trip.

I was lucky enough to be on a boat with only two guests, one guide and one other researcher. (The other three boats were full.) The dolphins were mostly traveling or resting around Mikura, but a few individuals were inquisitive and moving more slowly. Usually, the inquisitive and playful dolphins are the young ones. But, today we had a couple adult males investigate us, as well as #094 (Komuri) show us her calf that was born late last week! It was just like a cork, bobbing (or overshooting) the surface when breathing.

We saw a few mixed groups (both sexes and 2-3 age classes represented) and some groups just with Adult females and their calves (this year and 1 or 2 yr olds). I recorded ~17 min of video in total and a similar amount of data was recorded with the click detector. This should give me more data to process for ID confirmation later this weekend.

We have two more typhoons (#7 & #8) coming our way! #8 seems like it will head straight for us but is not (yet) as strong as #6 was. So, now we watch the weather as much as we watch the dolphins.

Another boat trip for tomorrow is planned.
Cheers
Kathleen