First Impressions

When we arrived at Springfield Plantation, we found our rooms and unpacked. We can see the west coast of the island from our lodge so we watched the sun set...it was remarkable. We ate dinner around 8:00. There was some type of fish, marinated goat, rice, salad, and various vegetables I've never seen before. After dinner, we took a walk in hope of encountering a boa, but were unsuccessful. Around 11:00, we decided to get some rest for our hike to Boeri Lake the next day. By the end of the first day, I had already realized this next week was going to be the most unbelievable experience I've ever had. Dominica is without at doubt the most beautiful place I've ever seen.

Dominica: Day 6 January 20, 2000

We started our day off by awaking an hour earlier than the previous days and ate breakfast around 7:00 instead of 8:00. After breakfast we loaded our gear and rode to Roseau. We arrived at Dive Dominica around 8:30 and boarded our pontoon boat. We proceeded to equip ourselves with flippers and snorkel gear. Our boat followed the coast for awhile until we came across our snorkeling destination...a small reef called Champagne. Since we snorkeled the day before, we had a better feel for what we were doing so we jumped right in. The water felt a bit warmer due to an interesting phenomenon at this site. There was geothermal activity here and the bubbles rising from the bottom of the reef was evidence. Andy, one of the ship's crew members, told me that if you were to dig in the sand with your hands here, you'd only be able to reach about a foot down before it would be too hot to bare. We snorkeled for a little over an hour and saw quite a few fish species that we saw the day before including my favorite, the trumpet fish. This fish is long and slender with a pointy nose. A few of my friends took some pictures of the various marine life with underwater cameras. We also spied brain coral, a few jellyfish, and sea urchins.

After we were finished snorkeling, we boarded our ship once again. This time however, we were searching for whales. The first species of whale we spotted were Dwarf Sperm whales. These whales resembled dolphins...they were very small and dove out of the water. Next we received a pleasant surprise when we found a group of Fraser dolphins. Seeing them was the highlight of my day; they swam right next our ship. It was amazing watching them dive out of the water. Later, we spotted a group of Pilot whales. These whales have a very distinguishable melon-shaped head and there could have easily been about 200 of them based on the hydrophone readings we received. We only spotted about 12 ourselves however. The hydrophone is an instrument on the ship that detects sounds from marine animals under water. It's basically a long wooden rod with what looked to be like a megaphone on the end which detected the sounds. The final whale species we discovered was a group of about 6 Sperm whales. These whales were oblivious to the sound of our ship because they were socializing, meaning they were in a group. We couldn't get too close though because we did not want to disturb a film crew that was on a raft in very close proximity to the group.

Luckily, I was able to film all four whale and dolphin species on my video camera. Our guide Billy told us how successful we were, though after seeing what I had seen, I already knew. Billy informed us that we were only the second or third to group to have ever seen four different species in one whale watch...I thought that was pretty outstanding. We then docked around 1:30 and exited the ship. Our tour guide then drove us to the center or Roseau, where we would spend the rest of our afternoon shopping and relaxing after a tiring day in the sun.