Friday, January 15, 2016

Big Pod of Playful Spotted Dolphins

Hi All,
We are back on Island. We have been searching around for JoJo but haven't found him for a few days. This morning we have a guest on board Jeremie who would really like to see a whale. He works at Club Med diving with their guests among other things. He just returned from working on a "Live- a -Board" in Egypt, where he saw and swam with lots of dolphins.
After doing a quick JoJo search, we started going thru many of the cuts in the reef to search for whales. It's still a bit early in the season to see them but we know there have been two sightings in the last week. No whales seem to be on Grace Bay so, we head out on the South Side and decide to go to West Caicos. We encounter one lone Bottle-Nose dolphin that seemed much more interested in surfing the fairly substantial waves than coming to our boat. We bounced our way all the around West Caicos, no whales.
We are now heading back, I'm snoozing in the back of the boat having pretty much decided there aren't any whales coming by today. Suddenly John stops the boat waking me out of my pleasant slumber. He has seen dolphins. I leap up to see so many dolphins you couldn't count them maybe 100 or more! I get in and a group lets me swim with them. Then they are off. I get back in the boat. These are Spotted Dolphins. They are smaller than Bottle Nose dolphins, travel in larger pods and apparently don't  come inside the reef. I've only seen them twice before in all the time we've been coming to Turks. They really want to play with our boat. They bow ride, leap and frolic as John whizzes around in circles creating lots of waves with the wake. One really young calf performs the biggest leaps you can imagine - way higher that our boat! Such Zest for life! Jeremie and I get in and swim for an hour with them. Several travel quite slowly allowing me to swim with them. The others are rocketing around, sometimes flashing by to check me out but mostly diving and cavorting. The calves are very interested but don't get very close. Unlike Whizzer who always comes close and wants to play. I don't think the Spotted Dolphins' Moms have given their approval, yet! I hope you enjoy the video. If there was ever a moment you thought captive dolphins were a good idea this will dash it!
https://vimeo.com/151855247

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