Education continues to be a major component of our program’s activities, directed toward the general public, students, colleagues in the United States and abroad, and wildlife management agencies. Public Education and Outreach: We work to educate the general public regarding bottlenose dolphins and conservation issues through public presentations at the Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo, [...]

By Randall Wells, PhD Our desire with each research or conservation project in Florida or elsewhere is to contribute to a better understanding of the structure and dynamics of populations of small cetaceans (dolphins, whales, and porpoises), as well as the natural and anthropogenic factors (factors of human origin) that impact them. We use an [...]

By Randall Wells, PhD, Director, Sarasota Dolphin Research Program More than 40 years have passed since the 3rd of October, 1970, when Blair Irvine and I set out in Mote Marine Lab’s 13 ft skiff to tag our first dolphins in Sarasota Bay. We still see two of the dolphins tagged during this pilot study, [...]

By Miranda Wrobel, Mote Marine Laboratory Mommy and Me is an education program created for young children (ages 2-5) and their favorite adults to learn together through marine-themed crafts, games, songs, role play, and special guided visits to Mote exhibits. In April of 2010, Mommy and Me curriculum focused on research projects that were being [...]

We work to educate the general public regarding bottlenose dolphins and conservation issues through public presentations at the Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo, Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, and elsewhere, articles and interviews, and through volunteering opportunities. We also produce books for the general public and students. One of these, “Dolphins, Whales, and Manatees of [...]

By Randall Wells January 2010 Recognizing four decades of growth and evolution of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program. In October 2010, our long-term dolphin research program based in Sarasota Bay, Florida, will celebrate its 40th anniversary. While it remains the world’s longest-running and best-documented study of a dolphin population, over the past four decades this [...]

By Kim Bassos-Hull, MS SDRP’s second year of collaborating with Mote Marine Laboratory’s Education Division and working with local area high school students built upon last year’s project studying human impacts on dolphins. SDRP staff member Kim Bassos-Hull and Mote Educator Jim Wharton led 17 local high school students to study dolphin behavior in high [...]

By Kim Bassos-Hull, MS Last year we reported on the implementation of an outreach campaign to anglers and boaters in Southwest Florida (Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties) after an increase in dolphins depredating from anglers and dolphin entanglements in this region. Fish Florida provided funds to Collier Sea Grant (Bryan Fluech) and the SDRP/Mote (Kim [...]