Expanding our research
WDCS is beginning our second year of research in the Turks and Caicos and with this second year, we are expanding our research to cover a larger area for a greater time and expanding our activities. This expansion is in large part possible due to a generous grant from Change Happens Foundation. We are also very grateful to two local whale watching operators, Oasis Divers and Salt Cay Divers, for their donation of boat time and two local hotels, Osprey Beach Hotel and Mount Pleasant, for their donation of discounted hotel rates. We could not do this work without their support.
Another reason we are able to increase the area and time of our study is because we have an additional researcher interning with us this year, her name is Valentina Vivaldelli and you can read about her on our website. So Valentina (Vale for short) and I will be splitting up soon, one of us will be living and working on Salt Cay and the other, Grand Turk. And in addition to documenting whales and dolphins and their behaviors and vocalizations, we will be doing water quality sampling and educational events for tourist and residents on the islands. The water quality kits we are using are courtesy of the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies and they will also be doing the analysis for us. So you see, what began last year as a 10 day feasibility study has expanded into a much larger project with lots of collaboration.
This expansion has been so much work, I think until you undertake running an international field project you have no idea the number of things that go wrong. They always do, no matter how much planning and preparation go into each part of the logistics - something always goes awry. That's if you are lucky. If you are unlucky then everything goes awry, haywire and all sorts of other names.
But all the long hours and hard work paid off because today we spent about 30 minutes with a mother and calf, which is so important to the health of the population and really important for us when trying to determine how the whales are using the waters around Grand Turk and Salt Cay.
So check back and we'll tell you about more of our adventures.
WDCS on Twitter
WDCS on Facebook
WDCS on YouTube
But kudos to the people who did their best to save him.