Day 3

Another great dolphin sighting today - but we had to wait a while!

We started off with the same transect as yesterday (as we didn't complete it due to the choppy water). Luckily the weather was much better today, but we didn't see any dolphins on the first transect. Or the second. Or the third...

At this point, Joan decided to gradually head for home. After a drive past of the fish farms (no dolphins, but a strong smell of decaying fish!) Joan spotted a couple of dolphins in the distance - so again we started to record the group size data (Richard's turn to use the PDA today). The dolphins were not especially co-operative - they didn't want to play and after an hour or so we left them to get on with their lives and headed home.

A few minutes later we spotted a much bigger group - 20-30 dolphins, very active! Lots of very impressive jumps, socialising, feeding etc. As they were so playful (lots of bowriding) Joan decided to try to get a skin sample (for DNA analysis) - Joan prefers the least invasive approach, using the highest technology - a washing up scourer on a pole! Unfortunately the dolphins weren't too keen today - most of the dolphins were bowriding too deep in the water, and the only one keeping within reach was a juvenile (and Joan doesn't like to disturb the juveniles).

After quite a few attempts Joan gave up and we headed for home - getting back around 1pm, which is much later than usual. A quick drink in Remezzo's (where else!) then lunch. After a quick break (during which we downloaded photos from our camera - see earlier post for link) it was time for photo-ID.

As "experienced" photo-IDers we started straightaway on matching a photo-set from a June team, whilst the other volunteers practised cropping and then matched today's pictures (relatively few photos and only 3 dolphins). Our set was a little trickier - about 12 dolphins, including a few very marginal pictures (far away or slightly out of focus). We could only match 3 of them - the rest were either too plain or too hard to identify. Joan then showed the other volunteers a video on "Dolphin People" - but as we'd already seen this 3 times we decided to spent the time getting our blog up to date!

It's our turn to cook tonight - Elaine has been very prepared and decided in advance that we'd cook shepherd's pie (and even went to the effort of bringing our own gravy!). Richard's contribution was to peel the potatoes and carrots and grate the cheese - obviously the most vital components! Let's see how it turns out...