Porpoising...

"Porpoising" is not the act of watching dolphins.  ;-)

Porpoising is the name for the high speed piercing motion of dolphins and some other species, in which long, ballistic jumps are alternated with sections of swimming close to the surface. Analysis of this behavior showed that above a certain “crossover” speed this behavior is energetically advantageous, as the reduction in drag due to movement in the air becomes greater than the added effort of leaping.

I've seen this with Orcas when they are chasing prey; not so much with our local dolphins.  We were treated to some of this behavior today.

First things first: we were able to get out of our canal, over the dredge pipes - had to "jump" three of them, but the wind was light and from the east, so it wasn't pushing us backwards as we tried to cross.  Making it into the next canal...

I've mentioned before that our canals open into the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway - here's the view of a tug and barge passing by the canal, in the ICW...

Yep, that's close.

It was a beautiful day today, with temps near 80 and clear blue skies; a perfect day to be out on the water.  We saw very few small boats, but plenty of commercial vessels...

Not typical around here: an airboat...

Back to the commercial stuff...

At this point, we saw one lone dolphin near those barges - no, we weren't going to go closer to investigate; these folks are hard at work.  We continued out to the jetties area...

The pretty water in that area...

Then, our first decent view of dolphins...

The fishing must have been good in this area - there were pelicans and dolphins all around (and only one small fishing boat)...

The dolphin came up right underneath this pelican and sent him flying...

The porpoising behavior I spoke of at the beginning of this post...

This particular dolphin was moving around the boat, but never in a straight line, and always at this speed.  Joan did a great job in getting photos of this, since the movement was hard to predict.

After taking this all in, we turned west, heading for home.  One of the tugs that had been working with the barges on the pipeline operation, pulled out to go for their next load...

It was constant movement with these folks today - most of the tugs/barges and crewboats were working this project.

We did stop to look at a few more dolphin along the way...

They seemed to be on a mission (perhaps heading for where the others were feeding), and heading the opposite direction from us.  We give them plenty of room.

Birds sitting where the ground of Mexiquita Flats shows at low tide...

About to turn into the PI Channel, this shrimper was heading out...

Coming back into the turning basin, and just taking in the beautiful color in the water...

Working our way back into our canal was easier than getting out.  Three "jumps" again, but in different places - they had moved pipe sections while we were out.  Just enough room to rotate at our dock and tie up.

Another gorgeous day on the water.