A Day in the Life... Samara Mendes February 22 Early morning starts! On an exciting launch day, we are expected to be up and ready for the days dolphin encounters before the sun has risen – then off we go to the center were we welcome guests and allocate kit for their dolphin adventure. Once briefed and kitted out, we make our way to the boat where the real work begins; getting the boat on the water (it’s harder than it looks!). Once everyone is seated comfortably, we hand out life jackets and make our way out to sea – as a volunteer we are tasked with handing these out, ensuring all the guests are comfortable and always willing to help guests when needed. Once in the water we are tasked with capturing not only our Dolfriend footage but the guests too (they love photos!). Once we are back on land, we make our way to the cottage where we munch down on some tasty breakfast, and begin sorting through the morning’s camera footage and create a small edited video of the days sighting. During the day volunteers are tasked with logging data into various different google docs – ranging from client data all the way to turtle data (data handling is definitely time consuming!) Once a week we conduct a water quality test for ph levels, turbidity and oxygen levels and a micro plastic survey – were we meander down to the beach with a bucket to collect sand in order to conduct a micro plastic analysis. Volunteers are expected to read through the manual and conduct the tests as thoroughly as possible. * What I learned.. I came into this volunteering project only knowing the basics about dolphins (what you see on TV) – having this hands-on experience has allowed me to witness behaviours I wasn’t aware of. This opportunity not only allowed me to meet and get to know the resident dolphins and their personality traits but also witness first-hand the immense efforts organizations like DolphinCare put in to try and conserve, save and raise awareness for these majestic creatures. This knowledge will allow me to be able to identify facilities that partake in misconduct as well allowing me to become more aware of what I can do as an individual to contribute to these conservation efforts. * Dolphins I fell in love with... On my third launch day I had the privilege of having half a circle swim with Ginger! It felt incredible to know that she felt comfortable enough to have a small conscious interaction with me before moving on. She had me smiling like a clown underwater – for its not every day you get experience such trust amongst wild animals. Gandalf was a very friendly dolphin that decided to bless me with a full circle swim on my fourth launch. This curious male is easily identifiable by a small growth on his mouth – he came in really close and swam around me before moving on with the rest of his pod. When these conscious interactions happen, they somewhat take your breath away.