Tag: older content

Thursday was an early day for Sabena as she made the quick journey to South Bimini for a tour at the Bimini Biological Field Station, aka the Shark Lab. She had the opportunity to see their research facility, talk to a few interns, and learn about their involvement with local conservation issues and research. Sabena really enjoyed the discussions with fellow marine biologists and the chance to expand her knowledge beyond dolphin research.

Wednesday began with a DCP talk to the Sea Crest passengers. They asked wonderful and insightful questions and we really enjoyed our time with them: thank you! In the afternoon we headed out for our dolphin trips and yet again, DCP was split between two trips. Kel headed out early at 13:21 and guests enjoyed a snorkel at “3 Sisters” rocks. From there we went in search of dolphins and we didn’t need to search for long! We came upon a group of six bottlenose at 15:35 and got two dolphin swims, one long and one short.

Tuesday began with a talk to Bimini Undersea’s guests. What a wonderful group of people! Thank you for your interest in DCP and Bimini’s dolphins. The dolphin trips were yet again double duty with the DCP team split into two groups. Sabena and Alexis left the dock first at 15:09. There were many sightings of flying fish throughout the dolphin trip! The afternoon continued into the evening as we headed back with the realization that we probably would not have any dolphin sightings.

Monday’s dolphin trips once again split up the DCP team. We are so grateful to the two Bimini dolphin operators who donate space to us. And the summer internship program allows DCP to be in two places at once! Kel headed out at 13:40 and the passengers enjoyed a nice relaxing snorkel stop at The Bimini Road (aka Atlantis) and then resumed looking for dolphins two hours later. Kel was lucky enough to coordinate a swim break with the location of the SM2M unit (see Sat 30 July’s post for details).

On Sunday, the DCP team split up for double duty as Kel headed out with Sea Crest Hotel & Marina just minutes before Sabena and Alexis headed out with Bimini Undersea.

Friday was an eventful day for DCP! The day began with a beach cleanup on North Bimini sponsored by DCP Conservation Member Chris Ribic. We collected over 11 bags of trash in less than 1 hour! These clean ups at our Bimini, The Bahamas field site allow us to give back to the community that not only welcomes us as individuals, but has been kindly welcoming DCP over the past decade. And of course we are very pleased to get some trash off the coastline and hopefully prevent it from ending up in the sea.

On Wednesday morning, the interns were picked up by boat to get to the Coral Reef II, the Shedd Aquarium’s research vessel, to give DCP’s fourth talk of the summer, this time to Shedd’s Teacher Field Experience participants.  All three of us introduced ourselves before Alexis gave an introduction to DCP, our research methodologies, and interesting facts about the dolphins we study.

Saturday began with a casual meeting to go over the DCP presentation that the interns will give to the Shedd Aquarium’s Teacher Field Experience early next week. It was a great way to remind or introduce dolphin facts and Bimini anecdotes to the team. As the interns continued to work on data projects – today included bottlenose ID and pectoral fin event sampling – Kel left on the final dolphin trip of the week. The human group was small and so was the dolphin group, but we all enjoyed the surfing show given by four bottlenose dolphins.

Friday morning (whoa, wait…it’s Friday already?) brought all four of us together as we began logging Bimini video data for individual IDs. This involves going through the video and marking, sometimes frame by frame, which individual dolphin(s) are in view. It’s a slow process, but makes all future research efforts much more efficient. And it’s oh so rewarding for dolphin geeks like us!
The afternoon brought more data entry and photo-ID for the interns while Kel headed out as an observer on a dolphin trip.

Though the interns didn’t have a dolphin trip on Thursday, they still managed to fill up their day with DCP activities, and Brittany and Sabena even managed to squeeze in a SCUBA dive!  They got up bright and early to meet the Bimini Undersea dive crew in order to gear up and get fitted.  The boat headed out at about 0900 and soon they reached their first dive site, the Bimini Barge, which is an amazing 90 foot ship wreck dive!  After a rest period, the boat headed to the next dive site, Turtle Rock, where Sabena and Brittany were