Another day without getting on the water.. IMAGE: A picture of my fins looking sad and unused on the front steps. Strange weather conditions mean that I spent another day inside instead of out looking for dolphins. Blah blah typhoon blah blah – still no sign of any typhoon, but the seas are rough and the ferry from Tokyo keeps getting cancelled. So to cheer myself up, I decided to make a big batch of my grandmother’s special spaghetti sauce. It tastes best if it simmers for 3 or hours, so it was an all day undertaking.
Tag: older content
Grocery shopping, Rain and Movies
While we wait for Tropical Storm Arlene to go away! So, where did we leave off? Right, yesterday we did big grocery shopping in anticipation of propane for our stove. We bought staples such as ramen noodles, but also a few treats like Yoplait yogurt. Being here makes you appreciate how accessible fresh food is in the states! And, since grocery shopping here entails visiting no less than three markets, it took a good couple of hours to get things done.
Back to school!
Today I went Back To School – but without Rodney Dangerfield In case I might have just revealed how old I am getting through my Back To School reference, you can check out this website http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090685/ to learn more about this classic, albeit slightly sophomoric movie. To its credit it does make reference to Kurt Vonnegut in one scene…
There is no typhoon (still), but there was an awful lot of rain this morning. The sea is pretty choppy, and there are no tourists to put on the dolphin watching boats, so there were no dolphin trips.
Today we had a dolphin trip / fishing expedition in some rough seas
Do typhoons really exist? My faith is tested IMAGE: A boat dry docked and ready for some typhoon action!
I am beginning to suspect that typhoons don’t really exist. There are some people who believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Flat Tax, and the Moon Landings do not exist and/or never really happened either, so I am adding typhoons to the list of mysterious and enigmatic items. I have been bracing myself for 4 days for a treacherous typhoon to appear on the horizon and wreak havoc, but nothing of the sort has come to pass.
BIKES!
Our first experience with shipping things to Bimini is a success.We spent this morning setting up a nice display featuring DCP and our Adopt-A-Dolphin program. This display will hopefully remain in the Bimini Undersea dive shop; however, will probably be moved around a few times before everyone agrees on where it can stay.
What
Mr. Typhoon has postponed his visit Today was the day that the typhoon was supposed to arrive. All of the tourists fled the island yesterday with the afternoon ferry, leaving only the locals here on Mikura. We had expected the worst weather to hit the island today. But lo and behold, the sun came out and the weather is gorgeous! There are no boat trips because there are no tourists, which is a bit of a bummer.
Rough Seas
Rough sea conditions made for an uneventful, rocky trip Apparently it is the rainy season—still. Today, Mother Nature made sure to remind us that she is in charge. With Tropical Storm Arlene no where near us (South of Cuba right now), she is still managing to cause a lot of cloud cover, rough seas, and sporadic rain showers/torrential downpours.
Mr. Typhoon has still not arrived, but the seas are too rough for dolphin watching.
A day of data, dawdling, and DVDs The typhoon has still not arrived, but the seas have certainly gotten a lot rougher. There were a couple of boats going out this morning, and I almost got on one of them, but we decided that we did not want to risk damaging our equipment by taking the camera out on seas this rough. Having the camera crash into the side of the boat, or accidentally gouging a passenger with one of the hydrophone arms was not something we wanted to have happen.
Bottlenose, but no spotteds
A nice day with surprisingly curious bottlenose dolphins… Every morning we seem to wake up to clouds, but at least this afternoon the sun was shining for our boat trip. With some extra folks joining us today, we were geared up for not only using the MVA1 to record video and acoustic data, but also to start using our digital still cameras.
Typhoon imminent, but we still squeezed in a trip!
The weather is threatening mischief…
We were on the water for almost an hour before we saw our first dolphins. This is pretty rare – usually we find a few dolphins within 10 or 20 minutes. I thought perhaps there was a dolphin conference out of town, or maybe the typhoon had sent them all into deeper waters. Eventually we found a small group that had skipped the conference and were still hanging around the island. #032 (Atokake) swam up for a good long look.