The first post in our field blog series is coming to you from undergraduate student Chloe Cavanaugh, who is out in Monkey Mia with Janet Mann, Eric Patterson, graduate student Madison Miketa, and fellow undergrad James Davis.
Chloe Cavanaugh
We went out for the first time two days ago, and were almost immediately welcomed by one of the notorious beach dolphins, Nicky, as we headed out of the mooring area. She swam right up next to the boat, practically grinning back at us undergrads who were still stunned to see a wild dolphin so close.
After we parted ways with Nicky, we headed out to Red Cliff Bay, the area just west of Monkey Mia and her flats. Eric went through the typical first day boat safety rules with us, and then before he could finish saying “now everybody look for dolphins,” we had spotted a couple traveling four hundred meters away. As we headed towards them I took down the starting time in the day’s first survey: our field season had officially begun.
This afternoon the sky still held the threatening thunderheads whose wind had kept us off the water this morning, but now the glassy water reflected them like a molten mirror. We were again greeted by Nicky and her calf, Missel the instant we got out on the water. Nicky, always on the search for a free lunch, was boat-begging, while Missel’s bowriding allowed us to see she had the aptly named “black spot disease.” We could see black spots on her head and dorsal fin as she wiggled and turned just beneath the front of the moving boat.
A couple hours later, through my strangely sepia-tinted binoculars, I, like everyone else, scanned a side of the boat for any dolphin activity. Suddenly, we alerted to a black blip of movement where the horizon bled into the sky. All squinting with concentration, we stared until the movement could be confirmed by repetition: a dolphin dorsal fin breaking the water’s surface. Two kilometers away, we identified our first sponger of the day and season: Demi. Almost immediately after that survey was completed we came across our second: Bytfluke. As we were all silent, motor off, listening for the breath sounds that would indicate she had come up from a dive, she made us all jump by loudly surfacing right next to the boat, with a basket sponge fit snugly on her beak like a prickly ice cream cone. Seeing her mere feet in front of me, I realized the photos of spongers, tough as they are to get, hardly do the real-life version justice.
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| Photo credit: Madison Miketa |
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