Name: FB79, also known as Vespa

Sex: Female

Born: 1979

Died: 2022

We first identified Vespa in 1985 and over the years, members of the SDRP observed her more than 1,100 times. We know that Vespa gave birth to at least 11 calves and that two of her daughters have given birth to seven calves of their own. She also had two great-grand calves. In 2021, Vespa gave birth to her 11th calf. (Check out the video clip below.)

Unfortunately, many of her calves and grandcalves have not survived.

Why? Vespa’s lineage is known for interacting with people fishing: stalking boats, bridges and piers and waiting for discarded bait and catch. It seems that Vespa has been passing bad behaviors down to her calves and grandcalves, which has led to their entanglement in fishing line, hooking, ingestion of gear and other negative interactions.

In 2022, our partners at Mote Marine Laboratory’s Stranding Investigations Program recovered Vespa’s body. It was too badly decomposed to determine the cause of her death. Her 2021 calf was just 17 months old when it was orphaned and we are keeping an eye on it to see whether it picked up its mother’s bad habits of interacting with humans, or whether it will develop less risky feeding patterns.

While we couldn’t “untrain” Vespa’s bad behaviors during her life, we can all play a role in helping to curb bad dolphin behavior when we’re fishing by following a few simple dolphin-friendly fishing tips

A Special Note About the Audio Recording

In collaboration with numerous colleagues over the past 41 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 have assembled a verified signature whistle catalog, called the Sarasota Dolphin Whistle Database, with multiple samples from each of the 985 unique recording sessions of 329 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, Aarhus University, Hampshire College and Cetacean Communication Research.

• Learn more about dolphin communication.
• In November 2026, we also launched the Sarasota Bay Listening Network website, which allows visitors to listen to the underwater soundscape — including Sarasota Bay dolphins and other animals. By pairing the whistle catalog, live underwater hydrophones and applying machine learning tools, we can now monitor the Bay for dolphin movements in near-real time! Learn more here.