We are now halfway through our adventure with Team 5. The members of this team have been exceptionally energetic and ready to tackle any task we throw their way. As we headed out of the harbor for their first day out on the dolphin boat, we met a 4-6 foot swell that would keep us alert and at a distance from the dolphins throughout the day. The team readily stepped up and helped us keep track of a group of 15-20 dolphins as they moved in and out of the challenging swell. We picked up this group of dolphins near Marina State Beach, south of Moss Landing and followed them as they headed north to the harbor. As we crossed the entrance to the harbor we encountered our second group of dolphins for the day, a large mom-calf group that were heading south. We followed this group for almost an hour, photographing them as they rode the waves. The following day we returned to Monterey Bay and headed north in an attempt to cover the northern half of the Bay. Surprisingly, we surveyed all the way to Capitola without seeing any dolphins. Taking a few minutes to formulate a plan, we decided to cut across the Bay to our most southern point of Monterey and then survey along the coast as we headed back to Moss Landing. After reaching Monterey we quickly began encountering dolphins. We worked the dolphins quickly and headed for home before the sea conditions deteriorated further.

There are a few great stories about our dolphins that I would like to share. One has to do with a mother calf pair that was sighted for the first time last year. Mom's name is MAREA (tide in Italian) and her calf was known to last year's team as Lesion Calf and is now officially named HEALER. Needless to say, this lucky calf was seen last year with a very bad looking skin condition (see the photo). We did not have much hopes that this baby would make it though the year but we were proven wrong....HEALER is still with MAREA in 2007 and definitely healed! You can still make out the scarring from the horrible blisters, but its body is clean and it has definitely grown to yearling size. We are passing the calf's picture around to experts that could maybe give us an idea of what kind of condition we were seeing....so stay tuned. In addition, MAREA is one of the dolphins we obtained a biopsy sample for last year. Maybe some answers to her calf's condition lie in her blubber.

For now, until some answers become apparent, we are just feeling happy that HEALER is still alive and well.

Introducing our new secret weapon. Our Canon 100 mm to 400 mm zoom lens! No dolphins can hide from us now!!

Sitting here I feel a sense of satisfaction in that I have helped with important research and also learned a great deal by being here, but also a sadness that soon I will be leaving to return home. I have the utmost respect for all the staff. Danny is a wealth of knowledge, and has many funny stories to tell. I hope at some point she writes an autobiography, as I think she has had a very interesting and exciting life, and she still has so many things to do! I have spent a lot of time with Cyndi; she is so friendly and personable. Her knowledge of the North Atlantic Right Whales is amazing; she is a fantastic boat captain, and a very well round young lady. I didn’t get a chance to work with Mark very much, but in the time I did observe him I can say he has a passion and dedication for his work that is not often seen, he is so smart, and witty. He is a fine young man who I think will do many great things in his life. They work so well together, and I really admire them for all that they do.

As for me, well I have changed and grown so much in the last few days. I have had my first humpback whale encounter, I have had a face full of dolphin blow, I have watched the coming and goings of a unique group of sea otters, and I have made some new friends that I hope I will stay in touch with for a very long time. Cyndi asked us each to write a short paragraph or so about our experiences, or one that stuck out to us. I have no idea where to start. Every day was fantastic with new and exciting experiences. I don’t think that I can summarize it in a short paragraph. Each person that comes here will take something unique home with them. I am returning home to finish my senior year at Ohio State University. Next summer at this time I should have my bachelor’s degree, majoring in Biology with an Environmental Science minor. This trip reinforced to me that I am pursuing the right degree, that this is what I am meant to do. My perspective is that this is a great program for people who want to learn and work. If you have a passion to help these animals it will be the most fun work you will ever do! Thanks for all the good times, and the great memories.

Sarah Rose

TEAM IV

Team quatro is well under way, and actually more than halfway done now. Time is still going by extremely fast. The good news is that the weather seems to be finally getting straightened out. The August fog has been reduced to little to none, and the days have been consistently amazing. Patterns in the bay have been developing with animals as well as the weather changes. We are seeing an average of about 3-4 humpbacks a day with as many as 9 today. We found a pod of transient orca's with a small calf a few days ago not too far from Moss Landing and we have seen them a few more times from the beach while on otters. Otters have been going well as we have decided to focus on flood tide samplings during team 4. The data has been real consistent and we are getting good results. The 24-hour otter watch which we do once a team has proved to be stretching the staff thin at times... since only Danny, Cyndi, and myself remain after Steph and Andrew left. During the last 24-hour day however, a german production group came to film us as a portion of their otter documentary.. which was interesting to say the least. More on that later.

On the dolphin front, things are heating up again this week. Many animals that we have not seen since last year are returning to the bay, many with neonates at their sides. This is very interesting, as we are finding a lot of our animals that are females. There are at least 15 mother-calf pairs consisting of neonates and yearlings in the bay at this time. One theory we are leaning towards right now is that the bay is a perfect nursery ground for the mother-calf group that we see growing - by the day it seems. We are easily up to about 95 animals identified this season, which is almost exactly half of our master catalog. Also we are in the process of matching with the L.A. catalog to find out where the animals are when not here in the bay. Hopefully, this will help us to get a better understanding of their movements and social structure and continue going forward with the great data we are collecting this season.

The past day has been full of good-byes at the Dolphin house. We are sad to say that our great friends and staff members, Andrew and Steph left us to return to college to start their semester. It was hard to see them go. We will miss Andrew's easy laughs, antics and his happy snores on the couch after a long day in the field. And for Steph, we will miss her diligent attention to the otter data and her jokes that kept us entertained on long 24 hour observations. The next day we also saw the departing of our smallest team to date, Andrew and Mayuko. The three Musketeers, Danny, Mark and Cyndi are left behind to hold the fort down. We will spend the next few days catching up on dolphin photo-id and preparing for Team 4.

Well, it's hard to believe the time has come, but Andrew and I are leaving tomorrow for the east coast. A month has never gone by so fast for me before, but I definitely think it's a good sign. There are so many memories, and today was no exception. We aren't about to slow down just because our time is almost done. We woke up to clear conditions this morning and headed over to Moss Landing Harbor for a dolphin survey. Somehow, the weather thought it would be funny to change and heavy fog rolled in. You can't stop a determined dolphin hunter though and we headed out nonetheless after it lifted just a little. We headed north and hit 3 dolphins early on, but we lost site in the fog shortly after Andrew was able to snap a few shots. We traveled north all the way to the barge without encountering any other bottlenose dolphins, but there were some other animals around. We ran into a group of harbor porpoises...nothing spectacular...until it was followed by another group, and then another, and then a few more. We think there were at least 30 animals in this school; there were fins everywhere! We saw a mola mola in the water too. I'm not sure why it's beneficial to be a fish that looks like your tail was caught and ripped off in a lawn mower (or whatever the equivalent machinery is for the ocean...or whatever), but it seems to work out for these guys. I actually thought it was a dead fish floating in the water at first but then I remember that I had the same reaction looking at the mola in the deep ocean tank at the aquarium. I guess I should give them more credit. Even though we didn't find any more dolphins, we had heard rumors that the whale watch boats had recently been spotting orcas in the bay, so Danny suggested we "do something wild" and we headed offshore. Once we got out over the bay we spotted some whale watch boats and scanned the horizon for activity, but we were surprised by a school of Risso's dolphins (see picture) right near out boat. I've never seen these guys before and I have to say it was pretty spectacular. Think beluga whale with a dorsal fin and a little bit of grey. The individuals we saw were pretty white, which I believe indicates older age, and we could see them coming in the water. They're a bit bigger than our bottlenose dolphins, and have many scars on their bodies. Their brunt rostrums were pretty distinct, but I thought they were absolutely beautiful animals and I was completely entranced for a few minutes as they passed by (luckily Cyndi was driving the boat and managed to avoid the waves or else I would have been a goner). We then caught what Danny thinks was a Pacific white-sided dolphin jumping out of the water, but all I saw was belly and tail so I'll take her word for it. I think that still counts though...anyways, we headed back to Moss Landing and hit the fog once again, but it definitely could have been worse. Our afternoon was filled with dolphin data work. The catalog is over 200 animals now, with new ones being named all the time. The names are getting more random and creative as more people contribute, but Mark still somehow has a handle on it all. Too bad I haven't found a way to start naming otters...I'm sure I could come up some winners. Who knows, there's always the future :)

-Steph

This morning we broke into teams of 2 so we could monitor the otter raft and focus on individual otters at the same time. Mayuko and Andrew held down the fort at the otter raft, counting the otters every fifteen minutes and monitoring the boat traffic. Meanwhile Daniela, Cyndi, Mark and Andrew ventured into the slough to scout out new places to observe foraging otters. Cyndi and Andrew picked a spot and quickly lost their otter. After an hour without finding any other foraging otters, they returned to the harbor. At the harbor there were several foraging otters, as well as an amazing amount of kyakers. Labor Day weekend has brought people from far and near seeking the refuge of Elkhorn slough. Mark and Daniela had much better luck. They found a great spot at the end of a boardwalk where they could observe several otters while they foraged. We plan to use this location for our focal follows over the next month. Later this afternoon we switched gears and walked from Sea Cliff beach to our housing complex at Pajaro Dunes, taking GPS points along the way. We'll use this data to set marks along the coast in our GPS on the boat. This will help us navigate in the fog. The entire walk was about 15 miles and took us 4 hours to complete. We all will sleep well tonight!!

Me, Dolphins, and Breakdowns...

Early morning fog delays the second survey that Team 3 attempted. We finally got underway aboard the 'Nereis' around 10 AM. Onboard are Capt. Cindi, photographers Andrew and Mark, and Volunteers Mayuko and Myself. Skies are blue and wind is low. Following an early sea otter encounter, we find our first group of dolphins an hour after start, about five animals are photographed and identified before we continue south. Six minutes later we encounter our second group. We begin following them when all of a sudden the motor cuts out and we are left dead in the water. My first thought is "Oh No, Not Again"...
Just over a year ago I was on the Earthwatch "Amazon Riverboat Exploration". Whilst on a small boat conduction a river dolphin survey our engine died on us and we were left at the mercy of the Amazon. We were rescued after about an hour and the engine was fixed. Luckily, this time the problem was quickly fixed and we had caught up with the dolphins within a half hour. They gave a fine display for us, bowriding and one dolphin gave us a spectacular jump right in front of the boat. After enjoying the dolphins for half an hour and collecting the necessary data, we headed back to the harbor while I considered whether or not I should enroll in another project that includes both dolphins and boats.

Posted by Andrew Miller