Dolphin Encounters

Feb 8

We arrived at the harbor before the flowers along the beach awoke. The mistral winds grew stronger overnight. Bruno doubted that we would be going out – that the fishery boats would even be going out – but a truck of baby fish was scheduled to arrive this morning, so they had to empty a net for them. Thankfully, we boarded the fishery boat again instead of heading back to the house for more data entry.

The waves in the harbor, usually a mirror, were indicative of the turbulent water beyond the protective barrier. Whitecaps crashed on our bow as we approached the fish farm. Everything had to be held down, which made data collection difficult. The strongest winds that we measured were blowing at 92 m/s, versus the usual 5-10 m/s. But the dolphins were out nonetheless.

Before our stern was even in the fish farm, we spotted dolphins. A pair was bow riding just a few meters below us, escorting us into the fishery. Andrea stayed to work on the Spartana, so it was up to Julia and me to fill her (very experienced) shoes. We tracked 5 dolphins all morning, swimming in and out of the fish farm and diving below the nets, especially the transfer nets. Three of them are known animals: Rinco, Bianca and Whitespot. The other two, an adult female and her calf, have not been sighted here frequently enough to be given names. Bruno had the binoculars and camera; Julia, the sighting records; I, the environmental data sheets. With five dolphins in rough seas and 21 cages of fish and two new observers, things got crazy! I sighted most of them, which only involves seeing them among the cages and distinguishing them from the waves then calling out “Dolphin!” over the fishery boat’s mechanical noises and, today, the wind. Then Bruno run around the boat to where I pointed to try to take a picture and ID it before I found another. Poor Julia had to run around behind Bruno and frantically take down everything that he said – and there was no repeating. His accent and the wind made her task all the more difficult. Ray-goo-lare di-bv Are wun cah g t-ree, T ael stok vee wun tw-an-tee mee-tars pos-tear-ee-or leh-ft. Tie-m! If she could hear all his syllables, Julia would write “Regular Dive, R1, Cage 3. Tail Stock, B1, 20 meters posterior left.” And then have to check the time before she had even written the observation. I tried to help her, but my eyes were always looking out. Next time, I’ll record the observations.

The wind and baby fish schedule brought us back to port before 10. We stopped at the Spartana instead of going back to the house, which is bad news for Julia and me. Andrea had been there all morning doing little tasks, so I hoped that there wouldn’t be much left. There was. Mostly due to what Julia and I perceive as inefficiency. I got to sort out even more screws. They have screws and bolts and rusty old unidentifiable hardware everywhere – in lopped-open water bottles, plastic cookie trays, shoeboxes. Despite the quanitity of screws, we never can find ones that they want. I spent the better part of four hours today holding sets of screws close to the description that he gave me. Too short, Too wide, I don’t like the gold ones, or The heads don’t match. If the number of screws still unscrewed is any indication of the amount of work there is yet to be done, I won’t see the completed project in all my 3 months here! However, Bruno claims that he just needs to install the underwater camera before we can go to sea. I don’t know about all those screws.

After lunch (pasta again, of course), Julia, Andrea and I went for a walk to the other side of the peninsula. The surf was incredible against the rocks and from the summit we could see Corsica!

Tonight, data transcription.

I’d love to write more, but I need to try to get more pictures to load!

Miss you!

Love,
Steph