18 May 2003 - 13:06

The Gulf has lots of dolphins. Yeseterday I saw several of them.

We were out with a retired couple who generously donate their time/fuel/yacht once a month. It was very calm. It was very scorching and high-UV (10+), and despite three applications of SPF 30+, I ended up crispy. And I was just lecturing my friends about good sun protection! I rue that I was not wearing more clothing. Many fish were present at the surface, little fish attempting to flee big fish. Those beatiful blue flying fish were around, as well as the tiny species of flying fish that look like butterflies. When we were almost to the westernmost part of our transcript, we were stopped by the coast guard and told that we could not go any further west because they were doing shooting drills.

We had a wonderful sighting of Atlantic spotted dolphins. A large group that looked to me like spread out subgroups. It included some individuals that we knew, and three calves, one of which was a YOY (Young of the Year ... itty bitty cutie). A lot of socializing. "Socializing" in dolphins is often a euphamism of sorts for sexual behavior, since much of their sexual behavior is used for socializing. It's really easy to see, because one dolphin (usually but not always the male) turns on his back (they couple belly-to-belly). They have white tummies that reflect the sun. There was lots of movement. Following them in the boat I couldn't tell what sort of movement it is, but pushing the GPS marker every few minutes and then plotting the points showed that the dolphins (and our boat) were just milling around in a big circle. I was taking pictures with their new digital camera, which makes me feel much better about taking pictures (ID pictures of dolphins are very tricky to take, so I'm glad to be learning, but I formerly felt bad about wasting expensive film/developing... and now I get instant feedback). I'll put some up soon.

Our fun was interrupted when we heard a distress call on the radio. Apparently some guys were out diving off Venice and one of them had a heart attack. The coast guard was talking to them, but we weren't too far from their coordinates, so we headed over just in case we could get there before anyone else could and be helpful somehow. We asked each other if any of us were current on CPR certification. None of us were. Saying "no" felt really bad. I was reminded that the cost is really negligible compared to the worth whileness, and especially so if I'm going to be spending time on the fringes of emergency response infrastructure (that is, out on the water). So I'm gonna get me and Wheel red cross CPR & first aid certified this summer and try to keep it up to date. Anyway, it did in fact turn out that they could meet up with a helicopter faster than we could get there. We went back to look for our dolphins, but never did find them, although we briefly saw a couple of dolphins in that area.