Program Operations

SDRP database status
By Janet Gannon, MSNR
The SDRP database is going strong!  We’ve had a very busy year in the field, which means many new additions to the long-term dolphin sighting database.  For every day we spend collecting data on dolphins in Sarasota Bay and the surrounding waters, we spend even more entering data, verifying them, and analyzing them.

Our database is carefully designed to ensure data integrity while allowing researchers to access, manipulate and analyze data.  We maintain a “front end-back end” arrangement for this database, keeping our valuable verified data on a server and accessing it through interfaces on each workstation.  Because we have designed the database with built-in analyses, we can quickly answer questions about the bottlenose dolphins of the central west coast of Florida.  The database is constantly expanding.  We currently have 32,781 dolphin group encounters (sightings) entered into the database (and double-checked, as the interns would be quick to point out).  Our identification catalog contains 5,777 images of 3,499 distinctively marked individuals plus some of their calves.  The database provides 92,541 identifications of these individuals from 1975 through mid-2007.

SDRP field and laboratory methods available on-line
By SDRP Staff and Students
Our program’s “Manual for Field Research and Laboratory Activities” is now available as a downloadable pdf file at our website, www.sarasotadolphin.org.  This 62-page document provides detailed documentation of the protocols used for field operations and data processing.  It includes chapters on:  1) Field survey protocols, 2) Post-survey lab protocols, 3) Photo-identification protocols, 4) Database entry, verification, and management, and 5) SDRP operations protocols.  The accessibility of these protocols to colleagues and students promotes and facilitates standardization of methodologies across research sites, and provides incoming students and interns with background materials prior to their arrival.  This is considered to be a “living document” that will be constantly evolving as we improve and refine our approaches.

SDRP sample archives
By Brian BalmerMS, Aaron Barleycorn BS,  and Robin Perrtree BS
Archived tissue samples can be very important for retrospective studies of emerging diseases or for tracking the occurrence of diseases or concentrations of environmental contaminants over time. Our inventory shows that we currently have more than 4,800 tissue samples archived at Mote Marine Laboratory (n = 4,349) and Brookfield Zoo (n = 477).  These samples, including whole blood, serum, plasma, milk, urine, blubber, skin, gastric, feces, and parasites, have been collected from 1988 to the present.  Most of the samples are preserved in ultracold freezers.  These precious and unique samples from our health assessments and from stranded dolphins are provided to collaborating investigators for specific research projects.  Most recently, samples have been provided for investigations of morbillivirus, biotoxins in dolphins, trophic studies, immunological analyses, environmental contaminant measurements, genetic studies, and milk composition analyses.