Dolphin F109

Stats

Name: F109, also known as Scooter

Sex: Female

Age: Born 1995

A Dolphin’s Life

Scooter has been observed more than 948 times since her birth in 1995. She is the second calf of Vespa (FB79).

Scooter has given birth to five calves during her lifetime — the most recent born in the summer of 2017. Only the new calf, which does not yet have a name, and Scooter’s offspring nicknamed Skeeter have survived.

Like her mother, Vespa, and other members of this dolphin family, Scooter engages in bad feeding habits — stealing bait and catch from fishing boats, stalking piers and jetties, eating discarded catch, etc. In addition to the direct risks associated with bad feeding habits — fishing gear entanglement and hooking and the possibility of getting hit by boats — this family shows how these behaviors can be passed down through the generations, compounding the problem.

  • Please don’t feed wild dolphins — intentionally or accidentally. It’s not good for you (it’s illegal) and it’s certainly not good for them!
  • Learn more

A Dolphin’s Voice

A Special Note About the Audio Recording

In collaboration with numerous colleagues over the past 35 years, our dolphin communication research team has collected thousands of hours of acoustic recordings from members of the resident Sarasota bottlenose dolphin community, with a focus on individually distinctive signature whistles. Recordings have been made during periodic health assessments, when we are able to obtain high-quality recordings of known individual dolphins. We are currently in the process of systematically assembling a verified signature whistle catalog, with multiple samples from each of the approximately 1,000 unique recording sessions of almost 300 individual dolphins. Members of this collaborative team, and our student researchers, come from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, University of St. Andrews, and Hampshire College. Learn more about dolphin communication.

Scooter and her calf 1095 in 2016

Scooter stalks a fishing boat in 2016