Gruesome cookie-cutter shark bite!

Another new mom Dolphin Cookie Cutter Shark Bite

So I have had two trips in the last two days with one more scheduled for tomorrow morning. That will bring my total this year up to 34 (3 more than last season), and I still have a couple of weeks to go! Fantastic! I recorded lots and lots of video today and yesterday. Today’s trip was with Ichiro-sensei; a special trip with just dolphin researchers – 4 of us in total. It was kind of nice with just the researchers I must admit – the whole process seemed to run much more smoothly. Although I am thankful that there are tourists here at all – without them, there wouldn’t be any dolphin watching trips in the first place. We found another huge group of subadult and adult males as well as subadult females. They were very social, and we stayed in the water with them for quite some time. I accidentally got a close up of a fresh cookie-cutter shark bite that one dolphin has managed to acquire (picture above). It probably hurts quite a bit, but it is not in any way fatal, and will leave a nice new scar for us to use for ID!

In other exciting news, it has been confirmed that Shimibaa (#057) has become the newest mother. Her calf is quite small – probably a week old or so. I haven’t seen her yet. Maybe tomorrow!!

-Justin