While John & his camera wandered the island this morning, we tackled the remainder of MVA tape 1. Hopefully the rest of the tapes won’t take us quite as long as this one! But, it is rewarding when you finish- especially when it involves some tricky IDs! The rest of the day included some more filming- us leaving the house & returning, as if it were a boat day and then a bit just enjoying an afternoon swim. And then we made really tasty beef burritos for dinner. Mmmmmm……
Tag: older content
More bla weather
Tropical Storm Alberto is ruining things! We don’t really mean that, because we’re happy to be well on the outskirts of the storm, but we are not used to so many overcast days here on Bimini! Luckily, John is so flexible. We spent the early afternoon exploring the Gallant Lady (a rusted ship on the southwest shore of Bimini) then went indoors for a lesson in PhotoShop. Our pictures have never looked better!
Dolphins should be heard and not seen
Marco? Polo?I had an early morning boat trip today – in the rain. It was nice and warm both in the water and on the boat, but many hours worth of rain during the morning and the previous night churned up the water. Visibility was terrible. I spent a lot of time treading water and spinning around – searching the distance for a glimpse of the whistling dolphins that I cold hear all around me. But they only rarely swam close enough for me to get a good shot of them.
Another gloomy day
Today started with a very lazy morning! But, then we decided to brave the threatening weather. We headed north to snorkel at Atlantis for John to get some shots. He filmed us with the array and just checking out the site. The sun never did come out, but the sea was much flatter, so it was a more pleasant ride back to the dock. Then it was home before sunset and John made a fabulous dinner for us all! A pretty good day- with one exception.
ID marathon
How to recognize a dolphin I spent all of today and yesterday getting caught up on my backlog of video ID. It is rewarding, but also quite a demanding task. If you look at the above picture, you will see a typical still frame from the video I collect. It is of a dolphin passing quickly in front of the camera, and is the only glimpse I have of this individual to use for identification.
Exploring North
A friend kindly took us out today to explore the northern reaches of Bimini. We anchored offshore and waded into the mangroves. It was low tide, something we hadn’t considered before heading out, so it meant very shallow water & poor visibility. The trouble with the water around the mangroves is that the slightest kick stirs up a LOT of silt & you find yourself in the midst of cloud of goo. Yes, goo is the official term! We found one lone pufferfish & a very friendly schoolmaster snapper who took refuge around Kel!
Kids, Snorkeling & John!
Oh, what a day! We spent the morning & early afternoon running errands and getting the house ready for John’s visit (Kathleen’s husband). Then Kel went to the dock shortly after 15:00 for the make-up dolphin trip with the tenth graders from the public school. Unfortunately, the trip didn’t go as planned because the seas were fairly rough. We did, however, take the students to snorkel at the Bimini Road (aka Atlantis).
Dental exam
Lots of video! Two boat trips today! I managed to record over 35 minutes of video on just one trip this morning! We stumbled across a large group of dolphin foraging in the tosaka (seaweed). They were milling around this one spot – which is a nice change; we usually run across dolphins on the move. These guys were staying put however, and were occupied with finding fish hiding in the seaweed. I managed to get some great shots of dolphins using their echolocation to search for fish.
Video, video, video
So, we officially see spots when we close our eyes. Even though we’ve had a break from busy boat weeks, we’ve keep busy with other things, including logging video. For those of you who don’t know, while we are in the field, we spent our off-boat time identifying all of the dolphins in our video data. This involves playing the video back on the TV and writing down which dolphin is in view at every given moment on film. In theory, this is a fairly simple task.
Respect your elders
Geriatrictastic! No boat trips today – I stayed home and went through more video IDs. So in yesterday’s report, I went on and on about the new calves from this season. Calves are very exciting and all, but to be honest, I get a kick out of seeing the older dolphins too! There are some seriously weather beaten individuals out there – dolphins that are likely 40 years old or even older. I’ve included a picture of #229 (Mimizu) – an adult male – let’s call him ‘an older gentleman’.
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