Wednesday 25 June 2008

Today was an interesting day. We came across the bottlenose dolphins feeding towards the south of the lagoon, then later a different subgroup further north and then at the end of the day when we came in, we found them again, in the yacht basin right where we launch the boat! The feeding is interesting to watch as the dolphins do a lot of dashing back and forth and surface-rushing to chase fish. Whenever we have seen dolphins feeding so far there have also been young seals feeding alongside, although usually in a tighter cluster, and with more fish leaping out in front of them. They're very difficult to photograph when they're feeding and it takes a lot of patience to get the ID shots we need, although it's great now that we're starting to identify individuals by eye. While looking through the photos of the day just now, I discovered one animal with a very deep scratch which we hadn't noticed while at sea (see photo).

The Heaviside's were almost absent from the point today for the first time, with only a handful sighted. But the big excitement of the day was that killer whales were seen by one of the tour boats. After all the boats had had a look at them, we managed to grab a few ID shots as they were moving offshore. I've cropped in a few and posted them below, along with a shot of a Caspian tern which was feeding alongside the bottlenose dolphins.

2 comments:

Theoni Photopoulou said...

What a beauty the Caspian tern is, stunning!

Anonymous said...

Time for an update, perhaps?