A fish tale

Yesterday was a very long day. It started at 1:15am when the alarm went off and I got up to gather my things, then head out to pick up my friend Jason, and drive down to Hyannis, MA to board a boat at 3:30am for an all day pelagic birding ttrip with the Brookline Bird Club (BBC).
We saw the expected pelagic birds - Cory's, Greater, Sooty, and Manx Shearwaters, as well as both Wilson's and Leach's Storm-petrels. No big surprise birds though. Oh well, that's how pelagics go sometimes. The birds we did see, we saw very well. I think the highlights of the day though were not of the avian kind. In addition to Fin & Pilot Whales, several Mola Mola (ocean sunfish), a blue shark, and grampus dolphins, we had the most amazing experience with a large group of Saddleback Dolphins (also called common dolphin). There were hundreds seen at multiple locations, and they had a grand old time swimming in the wake of our boat, and beyond. I've never seen anything like it. Here is a short video that I shot trying to capture the sense of what it was like...



This was my first pelagic trip with my camera, and there was a bit of a learning curve, but after taking about 700 photos over a 12 hour period (over 450 were deleted immediately), I think I may have actually got a couple of good ones. I don't have time to edit and upload now, but hopefully in the next day or two, I'll post again with whatever turns out halfway decent.