Our morning dawned brightly with very socially active dolphins! We had lots of activity level 4’s this morning during space use data collection! Kathleen had very little empty footage from the morning session and Stan, Tank, Rocky, and Ronnie were up to their old tricks … at least 2 or 3 times. Once data collection was done, we had a light breakfast before boarding the Dona Yita for a morning snorkel trip. We went toward West Bay to snorkel at “The Aquarium” – a location on the reef teaming with fishes. We also saw a spotted eagle ray, a puffer fish, a grouper, and lots of tang, grunts, and wrasse. In fact, we saw two schools of Creole Wrasse feeding on sea lice. We had a great snorkel and also took the CSU Rams Abroad flag with us, as you can see in this photo!
After snorkeling, we cleaned up and spent the hour before lunch viewing the morning video footage and practicing dolphin IDs. We saw several new rake marks on the younger dolphins and they were very social underwater, as much as above the surface!
After lunch, we got another photo of the group with the flag and Bill Gee’s dolphin sculpture. It is quite lovely as you can see in the featured photo.
Once the photo was done, we returned to the game room to hear from Paige about sustainability generally but also about how AKR promotes being sustainable. Then, we had a bit of free time as we prepped for our second 10-min sit-down with Kathleen, Shane, and Manon to discuss the progress of our projects. It was less intimidating to sit with them this second time.
Dinner was delicious and wrapped up with a Happy Birthday Cake for Don and Jade … both of whom have birthdays within the next few days. Any excuse for cake! Yum!
Here are our impressions from today, and the trip overall:
Flora – As much as it was a great and amazing trip, I’m excited to get home and see my cat and start school.
Eden – Happy early birthday to Don and Jade.
Noa – Thankfully, I didn’t get too sunburned on this trip.
Michaela – Thank you to everyone who organized this trip. It was a once in a lifetime trip.
Annelise – I’m going to miss the gluten free bread so much. I know I’ll be dreaming about it for months (I’m so glad I pushed myself to do this trip).
Catalina – Everyone in this group made this trip amazing and I’ll miss seen them every day.
Alyssa – I’m really glad I travelled out of my comfort zone. It’s been a great experience overall with everybody.
Kayvon – My back is sore from pulling five girls with a kayak.
Camdyn – I discovered Don’s Doppleganger is Lenny the shark from Shark Tales.
MacKenzey – Very few things will rival the experiences I have had on this trip and the people I have met.
Jade – Everyone on this trip was so nice and I was pleasantly surprised when the Birthday cake came through.
Paige – Loved seeing the spotted eagle ray on our snorkel. Thank you, students, for making the snorkel so fun.
Don – Paige was a fantastic dive buddy this week.
Shane – A really good group of students made for a really fun week.
Manon – Great interactive and responsible student group this week. Safe travels home.
Our evening wrapped up with the blog and also an ID contest to see who could recognize as many dolphins in 31 still images as possible from the videos. Alyssa was champ with 20 IDs confirmed while MacKenzey was runner up with 17!
We have one more data collection session tomorrow before we all head home.
Until then,
CSU Double D’s