The morning & early afternoon were all work, including field reports & updating the paper/pencil sketches that accompany the digital photo-ID catalog for the Atlantic spotted dolphins. Each season, these sketches are updated with major spot developments or injuries, known calves/mothers and the year(s) that the animal was seen. We worked through Class 2 (calves) and Class 3 (juveniles) individuals, comparing the drawing to the digital still photographs. We also had our Monday phone link with the aquarium. It was another small, but interested crowd.
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DRTs are safe on Mikura
Safe and sound – a visit to the Mikura school
This is a message for Pine Point parents. Everyone has arrived safe and sound here on Mikura. The ferry ride went well, and everyone looked pretty chipper. The students had breakfast and a shower and then headed up to the school to meet with the local students and teachers. So far so good! More soon!
-Justin
UPDATE:
We spent the day at the Mikura school which is HUGE, GIGANTIC. It is six floors with a beautiful gym and fly loft and a big pool.
After a rainy Saturday
Happy Father’s Day!! Yesterday we woke up to no power, so it was off to a friend’s house to spend the rainy day in front of the television. Today the weather was looking a little better, so we went out on the inflatable again, this time to Turtle Rocks. We did some snorkeling and saw huge parrot fish and a lobster. The parrot fish was also had a small remora attached to its ventral side and didn’t appear to be too pleased about it. There were dozens of other small fish, from grunts to surgeonfish.
DRTs have arrived safely
Kathleen and the Pine Point group have arrived
This is a message for all of the parents of the Pine Point students on their way to Mikura. I just received a call from Kathleen. They have arrived at Tokyo Narita airport after an easy flight. The whole group sailed through customs and immigration and are going to be taking the next bus to TCAT (Tokyo City Air Terminal) – just over an hour away from the airport. From there, they will make their way to Takeshiba pier and will be remain there until the ferry leaves this evening.
Peanut butter – no jelly please
Great conditions – sleepy dolphins
I had two glorious boat trips today. The weather was fantastic – probably the best day I have had so far. We saw plenty of dolphins, but they were rather sleepy so there was not much action. Kitte did ride the bow of our boat together with Smile – but that was about all the activity we saw today. The water is still infested with jellyfish. On the west side of the island we ran across a jellyfish-like floaty thing that looked an awful lot like a Portuguese man-o’-war.
Video is Done!
Today we finished the video pretty early on in the day, so we also went through the bottlenose photo identification catalog. Kelly had created this 22 dolphin catalog and Maria went through and looked at each picture to see if there seemed to be any repeated or incorrectly placed photographs. It was looking a little cloudy outside, suddenly the weather cleared up and we decided to go on an impromptu trip to East Wells on an inflatable boat.
Video? Check.
Today and yesterday we spent most of our time doing video, since no boat trips were on the schedule. Other than getting a good chunk of video done, we managed to finally get our phone installed! We weren’t sure we would ever see the day that someone could actually call us at our house instead of riding our bikes for communication, but luckily, that day is here. We should be able to finish video tomorrow. Until then, Maria &
Jellyfish soup
Smacked in the head
I had a special research trip this morning – together with Ichiro sensei and Nozomi chan. Instead of the usual 2 hours, we were out on the water for 3, which gave us much more time with each dolphin group. There were huge numbers of dolphins on the west side of the island socializing in the sizeable surf. I have over 45 minutes of video data. The visibility was pretty terrible – the red plankton is gone, but in its place is an army of jellyfish.
Radioactive plankton of doom!
It’s warm in the water….
too warm maybe…. It was calm again today – it has been almost one full week of pleasant weather and nice conditions. I had a morning boat trip – we saw plenty of dolphins, but the visibility was super crazy bad. The reason for this soon became obvious – a giant red phytoplankton bloom has made its way to the west side of the island. The water is littered with chunks of plankton and seaweed and lord knows what else.
No dolphins
No dolphins and no phone installation. We should probably just assume we won’t have a phone; that way when it is eventually hooked up, we’ll be so pleasantly surprised! Since we didn’t have any boat trips scheduled and had already logged a video, we decided to take a swim in the ocean which was perfectly calm and clear. Just as we were getting out, Kel and one of the locals on shore spotted a fin coming towards us in the water.