The Project
My friends Jody and Nick are working on their Masters' theses down here, while heading up a research project with Earthwatch, a non-profit that sends paying volunteers to help with these things. Basically, it's high-end ecotourism. $2,000 US gets you twelve days with us, living in a pretty comfy house overlooking the ocean and coming out to help with the research.
Taking a break from life in Canada, I was invited to be a research assistant on the project.
Jody and Nick are studying wild dusky dolphins, extremely gregarious and terrifically acrobatic smaller relatives of the
common bottlenose dolphin (aka Flipper). My roles as assistant are to help train and monitor volunteers, as well as take photos of dolphin dorsal fins to try and identify individuals in the group. Essentially, Jody and I spend entire days on a little boat, zipping along a transect searching for dolphins, focusing on mother-calf nursery groups. I snap photos of the dorsal fins as the animals come to the surface, whilst Jody manoeuveres Punua Ahie (the small boat, aka Litte Dolphin).
As we zip around on the ocean, Nick watches from above. He uses a theodolite (the thing surveyors use to measure distances) to track dolphin groups from an elevated observation point.
common bottlenose dolphin (aka Flipper). My roles as assistant are to help train and monitor volunteers, as well as take photos of dolphin dorsal fins to try and identify individuals in the group. Essentially, Jody and I spend entire days on a little boat, zipping along a transect searching for dolphins, focusing on mother-calf nursery groups. I snap photos of the dorsal fins as the animals come to the surface, whilst Jody manoeuveres Punua Ahie (the small boat, aka Litte Dolphin).As we zip around on the ocean, Nick watches from above. He uses a theodolite (the thing surveyors use to measure distances) to track dolphin groups from an elevated observation point.
