Going to be Famous!

Not too much has been happening lately, besides the usual land watches boat surveys and office work. On thursday The Times came by to do a story on Sea Watch. This meant we had to get up for a 7 am boat survey in rough seas and rainy weather. We weren't sure we would see anything, but luckily there was three dolphins hanging out in the harbour. As we approached the dolphins we discovered it was a mother and newborn as well as another adult dolphin. The adult dolphin is named Bond because in the dolphin catalogue his number used to be 007. We have now named the female Miss Moneypenny because they were travelling together. Back on June 17th(my first dolphins seen from the tour boats) we spotted Bond and Miss Moneypenny together, but there was no calf with her. Therefore this new baby has to be just a few weeks old. The size difference was incredible, even compared to the older calves, this baby was tiny! When dolphins are young the surface very quickly and throw most of their body out of the water. At one point the calf surfaced by itself and everyone on the boat actually said awwww, which isn't something you often hear from hardened scientists. After we had enough photos of those animals we moved on up the coast. For a couple of hours we didn't see much of anything. Then it was my turn to go up on top to spot. Within a few minutes I had my own first dedicated survey sighting! There ended up being 5 dolphins foraging in the area with a calf and juvenile amoung them. The mother of the juvenile was teaching it to fish, we know this because the it actually surfaced with a fish in its mouth. There was some leaping and splashing around, but then we were informed there would be missile testing happening shortly so we had to head for home.
Today we actually have people from the BBC show Panorama coming to film us. We have another 7 am survey tomorrow with them and hopefully we will have more great sightings!