From a few dolphins to dozens!

Check out Georgetown undergraduate student Chloe Cavanaugh's second blog post from the field!

6/20/14

This afternoon we did our second follow of the season, on a sponger with a very identifiable chop-off for a fin. I wrote our first focal follow of the season, on Kiya and her calf, Wirriya, yesterday; today was James’ turn.

            There were several dolphins at first, which is always difficult, both for the observers (Eric) trying to identify everybody, and for the scribes (us undergrads) who have to write down which dolphins are there every minute, on top of the other information. But our focal started traveling consistently with two other dolphins after the first hour and a half of the three-hour follow, and things calmed down. We were out east and the water was absolute glass. Other than the time when the pearl farm pontoon came by and it took us several minutes to relocate our dolphins, things were quite calm. That is until about 20 minutes before the end of the follow, when off in the distance we saw the reason our dolphins had changed direction: a giant group of dolphins, heading to meet our little group halfway.

Photo credit: Madison Miketa

            James steeled himself for lots of writing, but there were so many dolphins that when the mutual join between groups was finally made, Eric had me pull out the second camera and start shooting along with Madison, to try and get as many fins on film as we could. There were more than 30 dolphins present now—by far the largest group I had ever seen. We laughed at how wonderfully overwhelming it was, watching them all dart about socializing with each other as the swam around and under the boat. Their squeaks and whistles were so loud that we could hear them from above the surface, if we were quiet and listened. And when they would all snag together on the surface, resting—it was incredible, how many of them there were, just hanging out in the glassy, sunset-tinted water. And when they leapt, now and again, Madison and I clicked our cameras like demons, trying to catch them in action. Even when the follow was over and we began heading back into the sunset towards Monkey Mia, we glanced back at the group over our shoulders until we could see them no more.

Photo credit: Chloe Cavanaugh