The URI student group joined us at Bailey’s Key for a last AM data collection session. The feature photo shows Bailey’s Key in the afternoon … after we’d cleaned and packed gear. It’s a lovely view.
The dolphins were VERY active this morning – lots of leaping and chasing around the lagoon. There was a really cool set of leaping dolphins all around Kathleen with 2-3 dolphins also leaping or pec-fin slapping in other areas of the lagoon. For a few minutes it was absolute chaos! Underwater, Kathleen recorded several small groups; Ronnie and Georgie spent much time together … seagrass playing or investigating the sea floor and coral. Here, they are looking at Kathleen and the MVA curiously.
Tank, Rocky, Champ, and Buzz played some sort of chase game that included Tank seemingly taunting the others over the lowered gate. We had much sargassum arrive this morning and the gates were lowered to avoid too much collecting between the pools. This made for a delightful game of tag/keep-away as you can see below.
The group had breakfast (but no chocolate cake, yet, as they ate it all!) and then finished packing and preparing for departure. A few students made one last trek to Baileys Key to see the dolphins. Two others finally got a piece of chocolate cake for the road! (it was fresh out of the oven!)
Once the group left, we rinsed, cleaned, and dried gear. We connected with a few folks at the resort and then once things were dry (thanks to the sun’s appearance!), we packed everything up.
The wind died and the evening presented a photogenic sunset and calm sea … we even had a few stars tonight.
We completed 16 data collection sessions with space use collected during 15 sessions. This yielded about 8 hours of data with the MVA, and two GoPros each (one front facing and one back facing). We will be busy for quite a while logging these videos and then coding them for various behaviors.
It’s been a very productive January trip.
Cheers
Kathleen & Manon
P.S. Manon had chocolate cake for dessert … inspired by URI students?🤔