Meet the 2026 Sarasota Bay Dolphin Calves! On May 1, 2026, we spotted the first calf of the year. 22-year-old Mom, F209, had her sixth documented calf. F209, nicknamed Keeley, is the granddaughter to FB55, nicknamed Rebecca. FB55’s mom, FB05 (“W-2”), was first identified in 1971. Interestingly, the place we saw Keeley
In April 2026, members of our team traveled to the Galápagos, a UNESCO World Heritage site. There, we (Aaron Barleycorn, field manager and senior researcher, staff scientist Dr. Krystan Wilkinson, and I) worked with the Cetacea Galapagos Program from the Galapagos Science Center (GSC) to attach satellite-linked tags to bottlenose dolphins using the TADpole
TADpole Breaks New Ground in Spinner Dolphin Studies During field work in O'ahu, Hawaii in earlier this summer (2025), SDRP collaborated with Robin Baird of Cascadia Research Collective to deploy satellite-linked tags on spinner dolphins. This was the first time this species has been tracked with satellite-linked tags — a feat made
Will Changing Weather Patterns Expose Dolphins to More Chemicals? Sarasota Bay, Florida, study aims to understand whether excess rainfall and red tides impact the concentration of chemical contaminants in dolphins Since 2016, the College of Charleston and its partners at the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program (SDRP) have been studying
Oh Baby! Meet the 2024 Sarasota Bay Dolphin Calves! 2075 is the first young-of-the-year (YOY) Sarasota Bay dolphin of 2024! We captured this image on May 7. If you look closely at the calf, you can see stripes between its head and dorsal fin. These wrinkles are called “fetal folds” or “neonatal
SDRP Leader Receives Lifetime Achievement Award We're proud to offer congratulations to one of our own: Dr. Randy Wells, Vice President of Marine Mammal Conservation at the Chicago Zoological Society and director of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program. Dr. Wells received the Kenneth S. Norris Lifetime Achievement Award from the
SDRP staff includes (top row, in the tower) Jonathan Crossman, Dr. Katie McHugh; (middle row) Kim Bassos-Hull, Aaron Barleycorn, Dr. Krystan Wilkinson; (bottom row) Jason Allen, Dr. Randy Wells and Dr. Christina Toms, with interns Jessica Barrios, Leticia Megpali Estevão and Amy Cabeceiras. CZS's Sarasota Dolphin Research Program Earns Disney Conservation Hero Award
Evaluating the costs and benefits of intervening when dolphins face life threatening entanglements Some of the most popular stories we tell are about the successful rescues we’ve undertaken to save wild dolphins with life-threatening injuries from entanglement in fishing gear or other types of debris. Social media posts about these
When we began thinking about ways to celebrate our milestone 50th year, our initial plans called for an in-person symposium focused on our dolphin research and the achievements that we, along with our research partners and colleagues, have made over the past five decades. Though we still hope to make that happen in 2021, when
On Oct. 3, 1970, researcher Blair Irvine attached the first tags on Sarasota bottlenose dolphins, beginning what would become the world’s longest-running study of a wild dolphin population — today known as the Chicago Zoological Society’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program. On that day, Blair attached plastic tags to the dorsal fins of a pair of
