Welcome to the Marine Mammal and wildlife Research and Community Development Expedition blog where you can keep up to date with all the happenings and information from Kenya

Monday, October 25, 2010

Spectacular Spinner Sighting!

I never thought a dolphin could jump four feet in the air and spin 360 degrees before landing an enormous belly flop. I never believed it was possible, until today.

We were out in the choppy waters near Tanzania, hoping that we would see something new after Shafii, our resident marine guru had suggested that it might be a perfect day to go looking for Spinner dolphins in deeper waters, but I don’t think anyone really believed it would happen. Then, Jon spotted something moving on the horizon.



-- Spinner dolphins spotted near Tanzanian waters --


As we got closer, everyone started going crazy with Jon shouting “Its Spinner Dolphins” at the top of his lungs like a four year old at Christmas! We approached slowly with the boat and discovered at least 100 individual spinners in a huge pod!



-- Over 100 individual dolphins moving together around our boat! --


But it got even better! One of the spinners in the distance started putting on a show, leaping out of the water and spinning vertically four or five times before hitting the water again. It was absolutely amazing to watch them doing their spinning thing!



-- The spectacular 'spinning' these dolphins are famous for --


Being a highly active species, they even started trying to bow ride unsuccessfully on our small, ridiculously slow boat. The pod followed our boat for about an hour before we went our separate ways.




-- It was incredible to see dolphins leaping clear of the water! --


It was almost too good to be true! If I didn’t have hundreds of photos and multiple video shots of the spectacular event I wouldn’t even believe it myself!

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