Peron Highlights

7/1/14

Chloe Cavanaugh

            This morning we took the boat up to Peron, an hour’s ride to the Northwest at blasting speed. As we rounded Skipjack Point, the red rock outcrop with a tall, smokestack of a lighthouse atop it, we began our first survey in the protected inlet beyond. The turquoise water might as well have been a glass window to the immaculate sand a couple meters below, and all the shovelnose rays and starfish that clung to the bottom.

Peron landscape
Photo credit: Ewa Krzyszczyk

We rounded the broad red dune of Peron Point. Pomboo pitched back and forth as we rode through the patch of sea in front of the point where the two tides meet. Professor Mann has aptly named it The Vortex. Our next survey was on Cha-cha and Flamenco. We stuck with them for a while because they belong to a group of dolphins that beach forage: the dolphins chase fish in the shallows and then hurl themselves up against the wet sand to corner and catch said fish. Sure enough, we soon witnessed Cha-Cha and Flamenco doing both partial and full beachings in their pursuit of fish.

Beaching dolphin
Photo credit: Eric Patterson

We spent the afternoon running a transect line. The objective is to go in a straight line from one GPS location to another, and survey any dolphins seen within 300 meters of that 8 kilometer-long stretch. James set the coordinates and drove while the rest of us kept vigilant watch from each side of the boat. We saw many dolphins, but the highlight of the transect came when we spotted a very strange-looking chop-off a couple hundred meters out. Closer inspection revealed a light gray, lumpy, isosceles triangle of a fin. We squinted in confusion as the dolphin surfaced again.

"Sammy" the Sousa
Photo credit: Madison Miketa

“It’s Sammy!” cried Professor Mann. Sammy the Sousa chinensis; an Indo-Pacific Humpbacked dolphin that hangs around Peron. Seeing Sammy in comparison to the bottlenose dolphins we see illustrated the contrast between the bottlenose's quick dives and long, streamlined body and Sammy’s slow dives and stubby, misshapen frame. Seeing Sammy was certainly one of the highlights of the season.