Name: FB2

Sex: Male

Age: Born 1991

Interestingly, FB2 was still a young dolphin hanging out with his mom during a health assessment many years ago when we noted during an ultrasound that his mother Genie was pregnant with her next calf. He often spent time with another dolphin named Yorick.

Did you know that ultrasounds taken during our health assessments of the Sarasota Bay dolphin population have helped us uncover some of the apparent impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on dolphins near Louisiana? We know from our ongoing research that 83 percent of the Sarasota Bay mothers with diagnosed pregnancies were later seen with calves swimming alongside. But in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, which was heavily oiled during the spill, only 20 percent of dolphin pregnancies are successful. Interested in learning more?

• Fetal Survival of Common Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in Sarasota Bay, Florida
• Reproductive outcome and survival of common bottlenose dolphins sampled in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, USA, following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

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.