The mother of all dolphin days 
What a perfect day. The weather was wonderful – sunny and warm. The bad news: my morning dolphin trip was cancelled. The good news: Kogi-san (housemate, friend and fellow researcher) offered to take Nana-chan and I out on a special dolphin watching trip solely for research! And lucky for us, today was the unofficial “Dolphin Census Day” here on Mikura. It felt like every single dolphin that had ever been seen around Mikura decided to make an appearance today. We saw 3 different groups – each containing 25 to 30 dolphins. Madness! I probably have footage of 80 to 90 individual dolphins from today (many of them off in the distance, so ID is impossible). I have already gone through the videotape and I managed to ID at least 30 of them. For one day of video that is pretty darn good! I was pretty psyched – if only every day were like this. It is in huge contrast to that disastrous day where I only had 20 seconds of video.
There was one dolphin today who spent a lot of time swimming around the camera – like a crazed lunatic. (pictured above) He kept darting in and out of view at full speed and twisting and turning around us. Only thing is – I couldn’t ID him. It looks like he has some sort of weird skin disease, so some of his scars have been obscured. Without scar info, it is very difficult to figure out who he is. So I nicknamed him Mr. Pockmark. Not a flattering nickname, but it will help me remember him the next time around. I seriously doubt that that name will catch on here with the dolphin research group…
Here’s hoping that tomorrow will be another successful day! Good night Mr. Pockmark!
-Justin