Name: FB25

Sex: Female

Age: Born 1978

Sarasota area boaters may recognize FB25 because of her very distinctive dorsal fin with a series of notches toward its tip. She frequents the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) east of Siesta and Casey Keys. This dolphin has been observed by our survey team more than 840 times since June 1984.

In 2022, we observed FB25 with a record 12th calf! This is the most we’ve ever documented for a Sarasota Bay dolphin in the history of our program!

FB25’s first calf was a female born in 1988 that was observed until 1990. She had a calf in 2014 that was only observed once before it died. After that calf’s death, FB25’s eighth calf — born in 2011, known as C258 and believed to be a male — returned to her side. She gave birth to a calf C250 in 2016 and he is now on his own. She also gave birth to a calf in 2019.

FB25 is the mother of Bill, a dolphin we rescued from a crab trap entanglement in 2016. She’s also mom to Nellie (her seventh calf). Nellie was just 9 months old in 2010 when she was spotted with line encircling her neck. Fortunately, we were able to free her of the entanglement and she’s alive and well today.

FB25’s second calf, a female, was born in 1993 and was observed until 2002. This calf was FB25’s only female calf to be observed into its reproductive years.

• Please be sure to stash your trash when you’re out on the water to protect dolphins like Nellie and Bill!

This picture taken on June 7, 2022, shows FB25’s record 12th calf! This dolphin mom is one of our oldest documented in the Sarasota Bay dolphin population.

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.