The Deepwater Horizon oil spill and several Unusual Mortality Events (UMEs) in the Gulf of Mexico have shown that knowledge of bottlenose dolphins in much of the Gulf is insufficient to meet the mandates of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. In much of the Gulf, stock boundaries have been assigned arbitrarily based on geography [...]

January, 2012 Bottlenose dolphins within southern Georgia estuaries have been exposed to extremely high levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Dolphins in this region have the highest polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) levels recorded for any marine mammal, and these levels are related to distance from a known EPA Superfund point-source in the Turtle/Brunswick River Estuary (TBRE). [...]

In response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) was performed on the St. Joseph Bay bottlenose dolphin community. The overall goals of the NRDA process, which is part of NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program (DARRP), are to: 1) Identify the extent of resources that were damaged 2) [...]

Individual bottlenose dolphins can be identified by their dorsal fins. But how exactly is that done? And why bother? A new report published by NOAA, with SDRP staff members Brian Balmer and Randy Wells as co-authors, explores the use of photo identification as a tool for making abundance estimates of inshore populations of bottlenose dolphins. [...]

Dolphins accumulate pollutants in their blubber. Bottlenose dolphins are thus a sensitive indicator for persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in coastal ecosystems. Brian C. Balmer, a long time member of the SDRP team, just completed his doctoral work. His research examined the effect of pollution from a Superfund site in Georgia on bottlenose dolphins. Congratulations to [...]

By Graham A.J. Worthy, PhD (UCF), Steve Shippee (UCF), Randall S. Wells, PhD (CZS/Mote Marine Laboratory), Martin Shannon (FFWRI), and Peggy Ostrom, PhD (MSU) We have assembled a collaborative team of researchers from the University of Central Florida, the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute to study the potential [...]

By Brian Balmer, MS, PhD Student, Chicago Zoological Society and University of North Carolina Wilmington In response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we were contracted to perform a Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) on the St. Joseph Bay bottlenose dolphin community. The overall goals of the NRDA process, which is part of NOAA’s Damage [...]

These data indicate that at the population level resident bottlenose dolphins of Sarasota Bay select soniferous prey. These results lend further support to the hypothesis that bottlenose dolphins use passive listening to locate sound-producing fishes.