It's been some time since we had Internet connection in the field, but we have lots of great photos to share with you! Thanks your patience and we hope you enjoy.
Our research team member, Pamela Carzon, has taken some great photos showing three of the five species we have encountered. Her photos show bottlenose dolphins, pilot whales, and humpback whales. We also encountered spinner dolphins (visually, acoustically, and with biopsies) and sperm whales (acoustically).
We hope you enjoy these latest photos and the descriptions regarding each.
Thanks again to Pamela for sending these initial images. We’ll send more tomorrow!!
BiopsieTursiopsToau: Taken at the island of Toau near a pass on the north shore, this photo shows the plastic biopsy dart rebounding off a bottlenose dolphin before the dart falls into the water. With a dip net we then recovered the dart and removed the small piece of skin that is inside the small metal tip. This photo also identifies the individual dolphin by the shape of its dorsal fin, which has some interesting cuts on the upper posterior edge.
Toau01: This photo show two of the bottlenose dolphins that we encountered on the north shore of the island of Toau. The dolphin on the right has a very easily identifiable dorsal fin.
Kauehi01: This picture shows the easily identifiable dorsal fin of a male pilot whale which was part of a school very close to the pass at the southwest coast of the island of Kauehi; we also obtained a biopsy from this individual.
Kauehi02: This picture shows this same pilot whale as it exhales at the surface.
Kauehi03: This is a male pilot whale at Kauehi.
Raraka01: This photo was taken at the island of Raraka. It 2 adult humpback whales that were resting very, very close to shore on the island’s southwest shore. We photographically identified and obtained biopsies from both whales. The water on the far upper side of the photo is the island’s lagoon. As you can see, at this spot there isn’t much land separating the ocean from the lagoon.
Raraka03: Another picture showing the tail of one of the humpbacks in the area.
No comments:
Post a Comment