The Whole Marine Experience!

It's my second week on marine and my sixth week with GVI; today was going to be my last day on the boat and the last chance (for now) to see humpback whales, but I can't complain as I have had two wonderful weeks!

Already on the first day out on the boats we saw dolphins, or more specifically, I spotted dolphins!!! It was really fun and exciting to see the dolphins swimming alongside the boat. We got a lot of good photos and had a long sighting. It was especially good to spot dolphins since a few minutes earlier I had yelled 'Dolphins' but it turned out to be just a log. It seems like the ocean is full of dolphins, every time we have gone out in the past two weeks we have seen several dolphins.



-- I spot my first Bottlenose dolphins from the boat --

To my big surprise the guys who had been on the boat the day before didn't see a single dolphin and, luckily for me, not a single whale!! I say this selfishly, as I had to stay on base and would have hated to miss it.

Usually when we go out on the boat we try to snorkel our turtle transects if the weather is good, personally I had never snorkelled before and I have to say that it is an amazing experience. It is a world full of life and colour. We have seen both Green and Hawksbills turtles, and some lobsters and of course a lot of colourful reef fish.

The coolest experience we have had during these two weeks was when dolphins came and circled around us when we snorkelled transect 9. Mari, Jon and myself were still in the water at the end of the transect when the people on the boat screamed 'Dolphins'. Suddenly they appeared, fast, in front of me and Mari before they went over to Jon and actually surrounded him, studying him for a moment. Back on the boat, Jon was of course ecstatic about the sighting and told us all about their behaviour underwater (see our last Marine blog!).

Back on base we usually do a lot of different work depending on how much solar power we have. Lately we have had trouble doing the work on the computers although we have still been able to do several land-watches as well as going to the mangroves a couple of times. In the mangroves we found a dead Green turtle which seemed like it had been dead for a while. We took a couple of photos for the wildlife strandings database.


-- Me with the volleyball team --

In my spare time I have played a lot of volleyball with the kids in the village. It has been a lot of fun even if the level has not been that good. Today we are hoping to have a GVI vs. Mkwiro volleyball match- come on GVI!!!

The Whole Marine Experience!