Monday, February 26, 2018

Whales and Dolpins

Hi All, The wind is coming down!!! We meet our company, David, at Spy Hop bright and early. As we head out, John sees Bruce a friend who captains a big fishing boat and asks him if he's seen whales. He saw two at Northwest Point yesterday. Clearly our first mission is to check out the water past the reef to see if the waves are down enough for our boat to go to Northwest Point. We decide YES and off we go. Flying fish are zooming away from our bow as make our way there. Of course the waves get bigger and bigger the closer we get to Northwest point. Our hydrophone tells us there are whales but not that close. We decide to go past Northwest Point and circle for a while hoping to see a spout (in my case hoping to see dorsals!!)No spouts so we start making our way back. The waves are significant but not a huge as on our last trip. Right as we come to the same place we saw the whale before, I see the turquoise color of the water washing over white pec just below the surface. I yell above motor "whale get your equipment!" The boys move in as fast as they can but, this whale didn't opt for hanging around. I see a tail indicating a deep dive and apparently John and David saw him disappear under Spy Hop. They weren't able to get footage but had some excitement. I in the mean time am trying to keep track of them between the substantial waves. Seeing John drives the boat 99 percent of the time I'm finding a challenge not to run them over as the waves, wind and current are having their way with Spy Hop! On top of that I'm trying to watch to see where the whale is going. I failed on that count! John takes the wheel (thankfully) and we start lurching back threw the waves toward Sellers Cut and hopefully dolphins. As we pass by Coral Gardens David waves at his family who are spending the day at the beach. I see a small round object bobbing on the water way by the reef we go to investigate. A beach ball perfect for David's young son Charlie. I love sea booty! Now on to Pine Cay. A few captains start signaling that there are dolphins as we near Pine Cay. We start looking and soon find JoJo and Snipper. They are in a totally different mood from yesterday. They are fine with my joining them provided I can keep up. They aren't playing, rough housing or porpoising, just cruising along. First in the murk toward Dellis Cay then back and out toward the reef where it's really deep and clear. Snipper makes sort of C shape with his body then a U shape then displays. I'm not sure what that is about but he does it twice. Behavior is interests me so much and I haven't seen this before. It's getting late and we'd better get David back to his family. We leave the dolphins and head back to the marina.

JoJo and Snipper 2 from Jay Sargent on Vimeo.

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