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 [...]

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 [...]

For centuries, anecdotal evidence has suggested that some human diseases have a certain “smell” associated with them. Ancient Chinese and Greek medical texts both refer to a patient’s breath and body odor as an important diagnostic element, and modern doctors often utilize patient breath odor for informal health assessment as well. For example, ketones in [...]

In response to the largest oil spill in the history of the U.S., as part of a Natural Resource Damage Assessment, a NOAA-sponsored health assessment of bottlenose dolphins was conducted in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, during August 3-16, 2011. The primary goal of this health assessment was to determine the potential health impacts from the Deepwater [...]

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 [...]