Babytastic Yet another boat trip this morning. What a run I am having! I worked on some video ID this afternoon and managed to identify another one of this year’s new mothers (Omizu-chan) from video recorded on June 2nd. This brings the total up to 4 new calves with 3 identified mothers, and 1 mother… Continue reading Meet Mikura
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Errands take so long!
Just a short note for today: Because we had a boat trip on Sunday, Monday’s trip was cancelled. Today (Tuesday) was spent running errands including an hour long trip to the bank. You see, the bank has been closed for the last 4 days; Friday was Bahamian Labor Day, Saturday & Sunday it’s always closed and Monday was “Whit Monday.” No one has been able to tell us what “Whit Monday” is exactly, but that longer-than-long long weekend meant everyone we’ve ever passed on the street was at the bank today.
We
Wind! A nasty bit of weather moved in last night; the seas were terrible. There was an intense and constant wind from the Northeast. The waves were tolerable on the west side of the island, so our little boat headed out there this morning. We saw plenty of dolphins! They were playing again in the big waves crashing against the island. They will surf the waves in, and then just seconds before they are dashed against the rocks, they turn and leap back into the oncoming waves. These bottlenose dolphins are not afraid of shallow water obviously.
A long day in the sun
So, despite our best efforts at reapplying sunblock, we are a bit toasty! We haven’t quite built up our tans, so the 11 hours we spent in the sun today left us with a shocking resemblance to boiled New England lobsters. Our morning brought us south of Bimini to go SCUBA diving. Aren’t our lives great? When we go to work, we’re free diving and on our days off, we’re SCUBA diving! They were beautiful dives…a drift dive and then a dive known for its reef sharks.
Them
Two intense boat trips – that is 21 in total for the season. An insane number! I am not even halfway done yet. During today’s second trip, I followed two dolphins, (#455) Saronpasu and (#065) Shakure-chan, who were involved in a little argument. It was most likely play-fighting, but they managed to look pretty convincing. They chased each other and chewed on each other’s fins. I can see now why some dolphins seem to be covered in rake-marks; those white gash marks that are caused by the teeth of other dolphins.
Oh, shocker, the schedule changed!
Well, just thought we’d let everyone know that there was no boat trip today. So, we spent the morning going through bottlenose photos and logging video. We officially have 4 bottlenose dolphins in our photo-ID catalog! It is very exciting for us and we should increase this as the summer progresses because we are getting a new camera!! Alaska Pacific University is sending us a digital still camera so that we can take photos of the bottlenose dorsal fins as they surface. We can’t wait!
The annual Mikura Quiz!
OK dear readers, time to exercise that gray-matter! I had another boat trip this morning – very calm conditions! But all of the dolphins we came across were resting – gliding along the bottom way off in the distance and avoiding the passengers (and camera). Still, any day out on the water is a good day! Well with little exciting news to share, I have decided to create this year’s Mikura Field Season Quiz. Here are your questions:
1) Name 2 typical differences between ‘dolphins’ and ‘porpoises’.
Slap happy
A lazy dolphin day Two boat trips in a row today! I am pretty tired! It was warm and sunny with some choppy water on the west side of the island. There were 3 sick passengers on the afternoon trip – I think they were as much sick from the currents in the water as the rough conditions on the boat. Hardly a trip goes by without at least one passenger feeding the fish (if you catch my drift).
Today’s trip was filled with inquisitive subadults, including Ketsushakure (#404) who I saw a lot of last year.
A slow week
There were no dolphin trips so far this week, so we spent our time catching up with old friends, running errands and brainstorming ideas for the rest of the season. Today was a rainy day and we made it a bit of a “girl’s day” with Kathy. In the evening we went to see the speech component of the “Little Miss & Miss Native Fishing Tournament” a pageant in which the youngest daughter of the owners of Bimini Undersea is competing.
Shark Attack Victim Update
Hamlet the Survivor Another boat trip today and yet another planned for tomorrow! Yeah! So some of you readers might recall the story of a little dolphin I wrote about during last year’s field season: Hamlet. Hamlet (now given the number #561) is the calf of Hamu-chan (#086). Sometime just a few months after he was born, he survived a terrible shark attack. I spotted him quite often last year and was relieved to see that he was doing just fine despite some very heavy scarring.
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