Category Archives: Dolphins
Happy Spring!
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” ― Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard’s Egg It’s officially spring! Cherry blossoms are a sure sign that spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest. But for Pacific white-sided dolphins, spring means herring. Each spring, Pacific herring find their way to inlets and coastal areas to [...]
The world’s biggest dolphin eating the world’s coolest dolphin
During a seemingly ordinary fall day with dolphins, I captured killer whales attacking and eating a dolphin on film. It inspired me to devote a chapter of my PhD to killer whale predation on dolphins and the incredibly dynamic interaction unfolding between an intelligent, efficient predator and its similarly intelligent prey. I’m hooked. There is [...]
Fifty Shades of Grey
It rains a lot in the rainforest. Even when the rain lets up, photographing grey dolphins swimming through grey water under a grey sky has its challenges. Our camera is often pushed to its limits. Out in the snow, rain, mist or fog falls in our little open boat, we dream of sunnier habitat. They [...]
WHEN YOU WISH UPON A DOLPHIN
This is the time of year we’re supposed to be packing up our academic lives, and heading into the field for our whale & dolphin work. We like it. Our dog, Wishart, loves it. Our Scottish adventure ends 6 months from now, and while we’ll be sad to see this chapter end, we’re excited for [...]
Pink Moon
“A Pink Moon is the full moon of April, named for the herb, “moss pink”, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because [...]
Five Ways to Show Your Love for the Ocean.
Whale you be my Valentine? I dolphinately will! Illustration by Leafeon via Quid Pro Quo on Tumblr Love prompts us to do brave, romantic and sometimes foolish things. To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, today we’re asking ourselves: How do I love thee, Ocean? Let me count the ways. We came up with 5. On Valentine’s Day this [...]
The Little Boat That Could…
It’s amazing what you can accomplish from a little boat! Here’s a photo of Rob preparing a pop-up hydrophone (a microphone that listens underwater) for deployment. Our colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology invented these amazing hydrophones that sit on the sea-bed and record all the sounds in the ocean including whales, dolphins [...]
Big Skye Country
In the summer, you can you usually find Rob, Wishart (the dog) and me doing field work in our little boat with whales and dolphins in British Columbia, Canada. This year’s different. We’re in a new country. Scotland. I’m finishing my PhD on dolphin ecology and Rob is in the middle of his Marie Curie [...]
I LOVE DOLPHINS IN THE SPRINGTIME
It’s that time of year again. Pacific white-sided are making appearances in the waters throughout the Pacific Northwest. Last month, Knight Inlet, BC was bursting with Pacific white-sided dolphins and we were there to collect ID photographs, acoustic recordings (Click here to listen) and prey samples. Soon after our Knight Inlet trip ended, our colleague, [...]
photo by J. Towers
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