Weather Roulette!

Sometime before sunrise, likely between 2 and 4 AM, it poured buckets. Or maybe it rained “cats & dogs”! We woke to find a muddy slurry for the water near our room and porch. Still, we gave it the college try and took the water taxi to Bailey’s Key at 6:30 AM. And … we were met with more icky visibility. When Ronnie greeted us at the platform, head up, and we could not see his fluke less than 2 m away (left side feature photo of him and Gizmo), we knew we’d not be getting in for an early AM data collection session! We stayed for a bit and played seagrass games with the dolphins who came by the platform.

After breakfast, we loaded up all our gear (MVA, mask, fins, snorkel, etc.) to return to Bailey’s Key in the hope that the underwater visibility would improve as the day evolved. We watched the first encounter, a second training session with Cain and Ronnie, Ashley and Mr. French, and Nicole with Tilly all practice the symbol/reading study training. We also saw the visibility seem to improve – we could actually see the sea floor and the dolphins from the surface (see feature photo to the right). After the second encounter, Kathleen geared up and we tried our luck with a data collection session with 14 dolphins in the main lagoon. There were quite a few playful antics as well as some affiliative contact … see here Gracie and Alita sharing reciprocal pectoral fin rubs!

Kami did her best to see what was inside my wet suit this afternoon! She grabbed my wet suit strap and decided to pull on it, which had it open it in the back! Thank you Manon, for closing again!

The afternoon had us transferring the video data and reviewing notes, as well as cleaning data sheets. Then, we took a snorkel from shore – from the north side of Anthony’s Key. Visibility here was still only so-so but we saw lots of fish and enjoyed a relatively calm sea. After our snorkel and freshwater shower, we enjoyed watching an eagle ray forage while the sun set behind Bailey’s Key.

We hope for improved underwater visibility tomorrow morning.

Cheers

Kathleen & Manon