Thursday (7 May) was a travel-filled day, but included arrival to Roatan

Bill S. has been helping to coordinate the DCP eco-tours for 6 or 7 years now. He and I met up at IAH airport in Houston and traveled together to Roatan. Our flight was delayed about an hour but that was fine with us as we are now on island time. Everything is “ish”. We were greeted with high humidity and temps upward of 91F.

We got to Roatan and Anthony’s Key Resort (AKR) by about 2 pm and I was out to Bailey’s Cay visiting the dolphins and trainers for the late afternoon program by 2:30. It was neat to see the new faces of some of the trainers, but even better to be greeted by leaping gray aquatic mammals!
 
Here is the run-down for dolphins who we’ll be observing during this session. Ladies first: Gracie, Cedena, Mrs. Beasly, Alita and Carmella are the adult females. Maury and Mika are young adult females and look like they might have their first calf each this year. Fiona, Bailey, and Margarita (Marg, for short) are the younger, more feisty females. Mrs. B. and Cedena are very pregnant now.
 
For the boys, we have Paya, Hector, Ritchie, Ronnie, Bill, Ken, Mr. French, Anthony, Dixon and a new male (no name yet). Hector and Ritchie have formed an alliance and dethroned Paya as the alpha male. They all sort of avoid each other now. Ronnie and Bill still hang out together and French and Anthony seem to spend time together while Ken and Dixon sort of hang out and sort of infiltrate other pairs. Their mom is Carmella so Ken is Dixon’s older brother.
 
It is good to be back and watching the dolphins again … our “family photo album” needs some new pictures. I’ll have new images and sketches to share with the DRT team from Wallingford – they are getting skilled at recognizing individual dolphins.
 
My first data collection session begins tomorrow morning, early.

Cheers
Kathleen