Dolphin F267

Stats

Name: F267, also known as Joy

Sex: Female

Age: Born 2015. Died 2019.

A Dolphin’s Life

Joy was the second calf of Holly and the grandcalf of Big Shout, who we have been observing since 1992. The dolphins from this lineage tend to use the northern parts of Sarasota Bay (Palma Sola Bay and Anna Maria Sound) as well as the Manatee River and Terra Ceia Bay.

When Joy was only about 11 months old, she narrowly escaped a shark encounter which left a distinctive slice and hole near the top of her fin that helped us continue to identify her throughout her life.

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.

F199 surfacing
F199 catching a fish