January, 2012 Mercury is a metal contaminant that can be found in the environment all over the world. Volcanoes are a natural source of mercury pollution, but most mercury contamination comes from human activities, particularly coal-fired power plants. Because it is released directly into the air, mercury can be transported long distances in the environment. [...]

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). [...]

SDRP staff lent their expertise as part of a multi-agency team that conducted a health assessment of bottlenose dolphins in Barataria Bay, Louisiana during August 3-16, 2011. The health assessment was one of several efforts being conducted as part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) for the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Oil Spill. Barataria Bay [...]

The 2010 MC-252 disaster (Deepwater Horizon spill) caused weathered oil to wash ashore along the north central Gulf coast and impacted estuarine communities of plants and animals. We assembled a collaborative team from three Florida Institute of Oceanography (FIO) institutions (faculty and graduate students from the University of Central Florida, researchers from the Sarasota Dolphin [...]

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) [...]

Much concern surrounded the potential catastrophic impacts of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill on wildlife and habitats in the Gulf of Mexico. The most common cetaceans in inshore waters of the Gulf, bottlenose dolphins, reside in coastal waters and bays, sounds, and estuaries where exposure to oil from the DWH incident was [...]

We conducted a 5-day capture-release dolphin health assessment project in Sarasota Bay in May 2011. The primary impetus behind the project was to obtain data and samples to serve as controls for comparison to samples to be collected by NOAA in oil-impacted Barataria Bay, Louisiana in August. An additional goal included training foreign scientists for [...]

The highest concentrations of PCBs ever reported in a marine mammal were found in the blubber of bottlenose dolphins near a Brunswick, GA Superfund site. New research compared contaminant concentrations of dolphins in three areas, including one with a Superfund site on the shoreline. Dolphins near the Superfund site had record contaminant levels, while dolphins [...]