Where the Ocean Meets the Sky... I'll be Looking!

Finally!

After three and a half weeks of photo-ID, we finally got to go out on surveys again!

It's really simple. We drive around on a boat looking for dolphins. When we see them, we take pictures. That's all.

Ha ha. I wish.

It's actually really hard to see the dolphins. You're just sitting on the boat, looking out to the horizon, hoping to see a dorsal fin or two. Waves make this hard, and a dark day where the dolphins are the same colour as the water... for an amateur like myself, it's daunting.

But miraculously, with a little (lot) of help from our supervisors, a pod of dolphins is spotted.

There is a lot of data collected for a sighting. Latitude, longitude, depth, salinity, water temperature, general location and the conditions (glare, cloud cover, sightability and wave height).

Then there's the taking of the pictures. Wouldn't it be nice if dolphins stayed in one place and posed pretty for a picture? Yeah, I think so too. But they don't. So they are swimming around, doing their thing, and we are doing our best to take a photo of their dorsal fin. My supervisors are absolute pros. I am honestly surprised when it turns out I took a half decent photo.

We go out for 10 days a month, which is half the month when all goes well. The weather defines if we can go out, although it doesn't always deter us. We have a route that we have to get through each time, and how long it takes depends on how many sightings we get.

Some highlights from the surveys I've done so far:

--We sometimes see other cool wildlife on surveys. Like manatees, sea turtles and rosiette spoonbills.
-- One of the dolphins is totally habituated to humans, so much so he comes up to the boats to beg for food. His name, no surprise, is Beggar. It's cool when you see him because he comes right up to the boat, so you get really close to a dolphin!
--We saw the oldest dolphin in the population, she's around 60 years old which is amazingly old for a wild dolphin.
-- We've seen some cool socializing and playing
-- Some dolphins have created really cool ways of eating. A couple families will actually chase fish along a sea wall and use that as a means of controlling where the fish swim. There's something known as 'kerplunking', where they slap the fish around with their tails, essentially knocking them unconscious before eating them. Smart cookies.
-- We see a lot of calves and young of the year. AKA really small and cute dolphins.
-- We went out in the rain one morning, boy did it rain HARD! We boated around in the rain all morning, stopped for lunch, and then the sum came out for the afternoon. Hopefully no cold comes from it!

It's a steep learning curve, but our supervisors are pretty patient and really helpful. And besides, in the real world, on the job training means that you have to train while the work is actually being done, so mistakes are easy to make, but certainly not appreciated.

But this is the type of work is the work I love. All I want to do is spend plenty of my days on boats and in the ocean looking out for the animals I love.

Speak Loud!

That's Fin-tastic!

So marine biology might seem to be all glitz and glam, but it's not all about being sloshed around on the ocean and swimming with dolphins. In fact, it's nothing like that at all. True marine biology is work. Hard work. Now ecology usually does require some field work, so there are some fun aspects to the job, where yes, you do go out on a boat and get to look at cool animals. But like most sciences, there are fun parts, then there are dull parts.

But to quote one of my favourite books (I am so happy I get to do this!): "He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness." (Bonus points to whoever can name that book. The answer will be revealed at the end of the post).

In order to appreciate the field work, I need to put in lab time. So this is an explanation of what "lab work" means to a dolphin intern.


We take pictures of dolphins. Lots and lots of pictures. Of lots of lots of dolphins. And we care about which is which. So we need to figure out who all these dolphins are.


Now we can't just ask them their name and genealogy, that's just silly. So we need to match their dorsal fins to pictures of known individual's dorsal fins.


So they give me a picture of a fin of a dolphin they don't recognize, and based on scarring, notches (bits of fin that are missing) and general shape, I have to see if I can find the fin in the database of all known 
dolphins.


Easy? No, no my friends. The picture I'm given is from 2010, and the database pictures start from back in 70s. And these are living, wild dolphins. So maybe now they have 5 cuts on their dorsal fin. But the picture of the exact same dolphin might only have three.

How do I know I'm looking at the same dolphin? Heck if I know!!

No, there are some tricks. You have to look at where on the fin the cuts and notches are, the space between them etc. And dolphins don't lose notches either. Their skin doesn't  grow over it. So if they have it, they have it.

But to break up the monotony (and it does get monotonous!), we have the chance to help with data entry and data checking. Which is also monotonous, but at least it's social and it's a different kind of monotony.

It's been exciting though, I've found a few fins in the database, which is really uplifting! Then again, I haven't found a lot of fins, which is a little depressing. It's an educated guessing game. But that's science for you!

Speak Loud!

PS. The quote is from the book The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Read it. Seriously. Read it. Don't watch the movie. Read the book.