I saw it all today – the dolphins were nuts!
IMAGE: A good head scratching will make anyone's day…
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I had the morning free! No dolphin trip! I managed to get some shopping done – coffee, milk… the essentials. It was a beautiful day. A little overcast, but quite warm. Just when I thought I would be staying at home, I got the Bat Signal, and was off to the pier to meet an afternoon dolphin trip! The water was really calm and no Angry Face Rain! Great conditions above the water anyway – in the water was a different story altogether. The rain churned up the water near shore to such a terrible extent that I thought this would be a useless trip. But boy was I wrong!
For some reason the dolphins were NUTS today. They were so excited with all the people in the water. They seemed to be hanging out really close to shore in the murky water – maybe they enjoy murky water? In any event, we came across tons and tons of dolphins really close to the pier. We did not have to go far at all to find some aquatic action. The dolphins came really close to the camera, making it easy to get good video shots even though visibility was awful. We saw mothers with claves/juveniles primarily, some of whom were curious as can be. Among the madcap things I saw today were:
1. Crazy circle swimming – always entertaining
2. Mating – always entertaining (for the dolphins, slightly un-nerving if it is directed at you)
3. Leaping! Dolphins 4 or 5 feet above the water!
4. Feeding – dolphins chasing some flying fish who were fleeing for their lives
5. Rubbing – of course rubbing – lots of close contact today.
I had over 30 minutes of pretty useful video from this trip today!
So this I don’t understand: over the past few days and weeks the weather has been sort of chaotic. For the most part, conditions on the water have been rough and choppy. Today, on the other hand, was nice and smooth and warm and pleasant. And yet today it seemed everyone on the boat was getting seasick! We had to bring one woman back to port because she was too ill to continue. And I saw one of the other passengers ‘feeding the fish’ from the side of the boat. How is this possible? The water was nice and flat and suddenly everyone goes green. Ah well, I shouldn’t ask – I can get car-sick in a parked car.
-Justin