Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Flipper Flap

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting at work and making tech calls, when I got a call from my boyfriend. He let me know that he and his father were down at Yankee Beach (a local lookout located on the Caloosahatchee River), and that there was a pod of dolphins swimming around the pier. Knowing that Yankee Beach is located just a few miles from my work, and that it was lunchtime, he thought I may want to come down and bring my camera.

Uhhh, yah!

I drove over quickly, and this is what I found.
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I got some video of the dolphins. They would come out from under the pier with fish. My guess is that the fish were trying to hide in the shadows of the pier, and the dolphin were going in there after them.



If you watch very closely, right at the end of this video you will see a dolphin surface with a fish.



Here's a pelican diving into the water, and then more dolphin.


This video shows a dolphin duo that we kept seeing. Even though the two are almost the same size, it is my guess that they were mother and babe.


The beginning of this video shows what seems to be a massive bubble or disturbance below the surface that is caused by the dolphins. It looks really cool. I don't know what they do that causes this, but I saw this phenomenon a few times.


While the dolphin were swimming over by us, there was a school of fish nearby that were going ballistic. I have to think that something was hunting them, considering their behaviour.


This video shows how active this school of fish were. You could audibly hear the water disturbance from hundreds of feet away. Unfortunately you can't hear it in these videos, due to the breeze affecting the camera's microphone.


It was a really cool experience, and possibly a once in a lifetime experience. I was very grateful that Woodrow had called me and alerted me to this event. It was a very special time for us both.

1 comments:

The Big Burbs said...

What majestic creatures---
What sort of zoom did you have on your camera? It looks like the dolphins were swimming right next to where you were shooting.
I'm sure they could see you very well from the water, but it didn't seem to affect them.