Jocara Newletter
Feb 28, 2005

We're still having dolphins on our mind. Jocara is at anchor in front of 
Dimbani village in Menai bay, right by a nice little reef. We sometimes 
see many fish jump out of the water, being chased by bigger fish or 
sometimes by dolphins. Apparently, according to the Swedish researher Anna 
who's working here for the 5th year, the dolphins are much harder to find 
this year. We've noticed! We've been out with tourist boats on quite a few 
occasions, often not seeing any bottlenose dolphins at all. We have been 
lucky a few times too. One good day we were out with Anna (no tourist 
boats around) and stayed with a group of dolphins for about an hour. John 
and I went into the water with our underwater cameras and struggled with 
hanging on to the moving boat, keeping our snorkels above water and 
getting footage of the dolphins. It was fabulous seeing the dolphins' 
social activities underwater. They were touching each other with their 
pectoral fins, with their beaks and had a good look at us. We're now 
working on putting together a short movie and presentation for the 
Institute of Marine Sciences to wrap up our project here. It's time to 
move on. But, as happens so often this trip, we're still waiting for a few 
DHL packages to arrive.

The Crew of Jocara.

P.S. Don't forget to check out our website at http://www.jocara.net for 
updates, pics and short movies, also archived newsletters.  Anyone can 
join the list or unsubscribe by sending an email to mandar@arl.nus.edu.sg 
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