An oil spill can have both lethal and sub-lethal effects on dolphins. Multiple research efforts are on-going to study the potential impact(s) on dolphins of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which occurred during April – July 2010, . Bottlenose dolphins are the most common cetacean in inshore waters in the southeastern United States, but little [...]
Bottlenose dolphins are threatened by monofilament or braided fishing lines in the water, and by crab trap float lines. In 2011, operating at the request of Federal authorities, staff from the SDRP led or participated in 3 rescue attempts involving entangled dolphins. Most often, a dolphin requiring a rescue is entangled, and its swimming movements [...]
Rescues of entangled dolphins, Deepwater Horizon oil spill-related research, and international conservation capacity building activities were added to our usual behavioral and ecological studies in 2011. You can read about them by downloading a pdf of our annual newsletter Nicks n Notches. It contains articles written by SDRP staff, students, visiting scientists, and current and former [...]
Again in 2011, for a second year, the story continues to be calves, calves and more calves. We have followed up last summer’s 17 new babies with a very respectable eight newborns in 2011. It has been a decade since so many calves have been born into the population over only two years. 2011 moms [...]
Coastal estuaries such as Sarasota Bay are reservoirs of biological diversity; however, out of the thousands of species that inhabit Sarasota Bay, bottlenose dolphins are of special ecological importance for at least two reasons. They are large predators near the top of their food web and they are long-lived. Top predators are useful indicators of [...]
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