And, we had a 20 minute encounter (swim) with 2 subadult males.
We had risen early to go meet the ferry which carried 12 research team members. They are here for the weekend training for their work during July and August when the Kenkyukai continue their data collection on the identifications of the dolphins around Mikura. Yoshinori (a senchoo) offered us a ride with his two guests. For the first 20 minutes we saw nothing except the island and the water. The first group was traveling but our second group hung out for a while. We had two sub-adult males, #053 and another one (ID not yet confirmed), with us for about 20 minutes. PLAYFUL is one way to describe their behavior. They whistled with and without bubble streams constantly. They mimicked our actions and circle sawm around me so many times that I had to stop and find the sea surface prior to returning for a breath. I shot 30 minutes of video today and recorded about 29 minutes of data with the click detector. Awesome barely scratches the surface as a description for today's encounter. But, I am pooped and will post these notes then catch some sleep. Cheers Kathleen