Again in 2011, for a second year, the story continues to be calves, calves and more calves. We have followed up last summer’s 17 new babies with a very respectable eight newborns in 2011. It has been a decade since so many calves have been born into the population over only two years. 2011 moms [...]

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 [...]

Dolphin entanglements and strandings in the Sarasota Bay area and elsewhere in recent years have led to rescues involving the SDRP. We were involved in three bottlenose dolphin disentanglements in 2011. The ongoing field efforts of the SDRP provide opportunities to follow-up on local rescue cases, as summarized below. Ginger In December 2008, a 3-year-old [...]

By Jason Allen, BS, Chicago Zoological Society We have been able to continue our year-round monthly monitoring of the Sarasota dolphin community thanks largely to support from the Batchelor Foundation and the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund.  The Sarasota bottlenose dolphin community is perhaps the most thoroughly studied free-ranging dolphin population in the world. We continue [...]

We have been able to continue our year-round monthly monitoring of the Sarasota dolphin community thanks to support from NOAA Fisheries Service. The Sarasota bottlenose dolphin community is the most thoroughly-studied, free-ranging dolphin population in the world. We continue to address increasingly refined questions about the lives of these animals with the benefit of information [...]

Longitudinal studies spanning decades allow documentation of long-term residency, site fidelity, behavior, ranging, and association patterns as well as trends in abundance. A lot has been learned about the dolphins that inhabit Sarasota Bay through such long-term studies. Do the dolphins that inhabit the next closest estuary to the south of Sarasota Bay show similar [...]

Our pilot project on the South Sunshine Skyway Fishing Pier in 2006 demonstrated that the problem of dolphins stealing bait and catch from angler’s lines was worse than we expected. In addition, a lack of monofilament recycling bins resulted in a littering problem, allowing potentially-entangling fishing line and tackle to get into the waters surrounding [...]

During three Unusual Mortality Events (UMEs), (1999-2000, 2004, and 2005-2006), more than 300 bottlenose dolphins died along the Florida Panhandle. St. Joseph Bay was the geographic focus of the 2004 mortality event. The most recent (1994) NOAA’s Fisheries Service abundance estimate for bottlenose dolphins in St. Joseph Bay is zero, but dolphins are currently observed [...]