Whales,Dolphins and ?

Hi All, There is lots of activity on the dock everyone knows the wind is down and it will be a good day. The captains and crew are hustling around preparing their boats. There are mounds of food and rum punch being loaded. There is much excitement in the air and everyone is discussing where they are going. They want to know if we are finding JoJo or whales. There's a procession of tour boats leaving the marina hoping for adventure! Ted and Suz our friends join us at 8:15 sharp with their lunch, cameras and snorkel gear. We head to North West Point with visions of whales and dolphins whirling around in our heads! I see some activity on the horizon before we even get there. A pod of Spotted dolphins are porpoising out of the water. One high jumper is a good 10 feet off the surface! I'm hustling around to get flippers and camera for a quick entrance as John entertains them by whizzing around in circles as they bow ride and porpoise in our wake. As John slows down, I hop into the deep dark blue water. Immediately two dolphins come over to greet me. For some reason there always seems to be a mother and calf that want to play with me. They circle wildly as if staking me out as their toys! There are other dolphins around but these two have laid claim! I play with them for a half hour then figure we should get on with our whale search and return to the boat. I see the mother come back wanting her human toy to stay a little longer. As I climb on board, I'm told the rest of the pod had moved on leaving my friends behind.

Spotted Dolphins 2 from Jay Sargent on Vimeo.

The wind and waves are coming from the South West making it a bit more choppy than we anticipated at North West Point. After putting the hydrophone in and not hearing any whales, we decide to go back in the other direction past Pine Cay and outside of North Caicos. It's a beautiful smooth ride toward Pine Cay as we glide along with the wind and waves at our back. There are battalions of flying fish taking off as we approach, a frigate bird soaring over head and it's snowing like crazy at home. How lucky are we! We aren't seeing any spouts at all as we pass Pine Cay, Parrot cay and on towards North Caicos. We drop the hydrophone in again and can hear a whale but only faintly. After turning around and heading into the wind and waves I finally see a spout way out on the horizon. John immediately turns to investigate and Ted's very special, favorite hat flys off his head into the water. We have to retrieve it before going out! This turns out to be a stroke of good luck. We don't find the whale but as we are all getting hungry and decide to go to Pine Cay to hang out for lunch Ted spots the most interesting whale? Dolphin? Its head was white as it surfaced and breathed. It stayed on the surface for quite awhile. It looked to be about twenty-four feet long. It had a small dorsal fin. Ted hustles around to take pics before it sinks down into the depths. We are all so excited and are speculating on what we have just seen! We are hoping his pics come out so we can try to look it up. We head back inside the reef to discuss our find and chow down our lunch. I'm wondering if we can find JoJo before the day is done! We head back to Grace Bay and we see a group of boats milling around Leeward. Everyones jumping in to try to swim with JoJo who is nonchalantly swimming up and down one of their anchor lines while Snipper is patiently waiting for his friend. After the tourists all check it off their "to see" list, I get a nice swim with the boys. JoJo goes down to the bottom where there are tufts of weeds swaying in the current. There he finds some fish trying to hide. I am so happy to see him catch and eat them. Now I know for sure his mouth has made a full recovery. He comes straight up to me after eating a few fish. I think he wants me to see that all is well! I believe dolphins use telepathy to communicate and I think we just did the same!

JoJo Fishes with Snipper from Jay Sargent on Vimeo.