Nicks 'n' Notches Online
A monthly enewsletter from the
Sarasota Dolphin Research Program
October 2022
Hurricane Ian Update
We’re fortunate to report that the SDRP came through Hurricane Ian with no damage! The staff and boats are all in good shape and we’re back to work after days of being away from our homes, with no power, and in some cases no water.

Sadly, communities to the south of us around Fort Myers and Naples cannot say the same, and we hope you’ll join us in wishing them all a speedy recovery from one of the most devastating hurricanes in Florida history. We would like to encourage contributions to relief funds for the heavily impacted communities.

The Earth Scan Laboratory at Louisiana State University recently released an animation of the storm — from its initial designation as an investigative area to its landfall in Southwest Florida and finally its dissipation over the Carolinas.
Gulf Cetaceans in the News
SDRP research was included in a recent story written by the NOAA RESTORE Science Program “A Puzzle with Missing Pieces: Marine Mammals in the Gulf.”

The story discusses the many challenges that marine mammals in the Gulf of Mexico face following the Deepwater Horizon disaster and how researchers are trying to address the challenges of gathering data to enact appropriate conservation measures.
Notes from the Field and Lab
We’ve got some exciting news to share about our ongoing efforts to conduct health assessments of offshore dolphins: In September, we were able to conduct assessments and tag four dolphins over the West Florida Shelf. The SDRP is leading this project, which involves a multi-institution team funded by the Florida RESTORE Act Centers of Excellence Program, through the Florida Institute of Oceanography.

The project involves hoop-netting individual dolphins (focusing primarily on bottlenose or Atlantic spotted) up to 50 miles offshore, over the West Florida Shelf, performing a health assessment, and tagging them for monitoring movements and dive patterns. We have now completed the first two of four planned field sessions.

During the first session, we caught, sampled, and tagged an adult female Atlantic spotted dolphin, nicknamed Eugenie Clark, after the founder of Mote Marine Laboratory, where the SDRP started in 1970.

During her health assessment and lung-function tests, she was given both a satellite-linked time, depth and location tag and a short-term digital archival tag, known as a DTAG. The satellite-linked tag, tracked for 106 days until Sept. 14, showed that she ranged 25-50 miles offshore from Tampa Bay to Englewood, Florida, and dove as deep as 147 feet for up to 4-5 minutes.
This map shows dolphin Eugenie Clark's movements after tagging.
Building on our success in June, the team returned to the field September 19-23, and tagged four more dolphins:

  • Two bottlenose dolphins — nicknamed Sylvia, after Her Deepness, ocean conservationist Sylvia Earle, and Ken, after Ken Norris, who was one of the founders of the field of marine mammal science and instrumental in developing the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act;
  • One rough-toothed dolphin — nicknamed Sam, after Sam Houston Ridgway, who is considered the founder of marine mammal medicine and who founded the National Marine Mammal Foundation;
  • And one Atlantic spotted dolphin — nicknamed Bill, after Bill Perrin, who was a pioneer in dolphin taxonomy, life history, population ecology, conservation and behavior, and another of the forces behind the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The animals were caught 20-41 nautical miles offshore of the Sarasota area.
All but Sam received both a satellite-linked tag and a DTAG. The DTAG remained on the large adult male bottlenose dolphin Ken for the entire programmed period, and showed him to begin diving to the seafloor and feeding within 5 minutes of release.

Initial findings show all but Sam diving to the seafloor, while Sam remained at depths less than 52 feet.
Rough-toothed dolphin Sam upon release.
The dolphin tags transmitted while Hurricane Ian moved through the area and came ashore south of where the dolphins had been tagged. 
The image to the right shows their locations during Sept. 20-Oct. 8.

The dolphins, from north to south are 213785 (rough-toothed dolphin Sam), 213783 (bottlenose dolphin Sylvia), 213787 (Atlantic spotted dolphin Bill) and 213784 (bottlenose dolphin Ken).

The large open yellow arrow shows Hurricane Ian's path on Sept. 28. The smaller yellow arrows show the approximate tracks of the dolphins during and immediately after passage of the storm, suggesting the dolphins were moving with the wind-driven following seas. 
The overarching goal of this research is to provide requisite information for species conservation and management and the project is addressing critical information gaps for the two species of cetaceans that regularly inhabit Florida’s Gulf coastal and shelf waters. Our specific objectives include:

  1. Improving understanding of dolphin stock structure and habitat use through tagging, tracking, and genetic sampling. 
  2. Establishing baseline data on environmental contaminant concentrations in dolphin tissues.
  3. Obtaining baseline dolphin health data. 
  4. Evaluating potential relationships between lung disease and respiration and diving patterns. 
  5. Investigating feeding patterns through stable isotope and fatty acid analyses. 
  6. Maintaining and expanding the long-term Gulf of Mexico Dolphin Identification System (GoMDIS).

We are in the process of analyzing samples and movement and dive data from all five dolphins tagged for this project. The lead organizations on the project, the Chicago Zoological Society and Mote Marine Laboratory, greatly appreciate the involvement of a number of programs in the fieldwork, including the National Marine Mammal Foundation Board of Directors’ Grants Program for supporting involvement of their veterinarians, the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The next field session is scheduled for May 2023.

Until next month, here's to fair winds, following seas and a quiet ending to hurricane season!

Randy Wells
Fin of the Month
Name: FB55
Age: 36
Sex: Female
A Dolphin’s Life: Meet dolphin FB55 — who we observed this month with her eighth calf!

While most calves are born during May-August, we do see new calves after the first day of fall from time to time. We saw FB55 with her newest calf the first week of October.

Dolphin FB55 is part of a life-long and well-known female lineage in Sarasota Bay. She is the third calf of a dolphin known as FB05 (first identified in 1971, the year after the SDRP began), she is the sister of F155 and the grandmother of F255. She has been sighted more than 1,100 times since her birth in 1986. During a health assessment in 1988, we removed a stingray barb from her head.

Her last calf, C557 was born in 2020. We weren’t able to get a photo of her calf this month, but we’ll share one when we can!
Be Dolphin Safe

  • Don’t feed wild dolphins.
  • Reel in your fishing line if dolphins appear.
  • Change locations if dolphins show interest in bait or catch.
  • Release catch quietly away from dolphins when and where it is possible to do so without violating any state or federal fishing regulations.
  • Check gear and terminal tackle to make sure it won’t break off easily and, if your line does break, be sure to collect anything left behind in mangroves or on docks.
  • Use circle and corrodible hooks and avoid braided fishing line.
  • Stay at least 50 yards away from dolphins.
  • Stash your trash in a lidded container on your boat until you can get to shore and dispose of it safely in a place where it will not blow back into the water.

Download the Dolphin-Friendly Tips Card

Celebrating More than 50 Years of Research, Conservation and Education
For more information on how you can help support wild dolphin research, please contact Randy Wells, Director of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, at RWells@mote.org or 941.374.0449.
Dolphin Biology Research Institute — DBA Sarasota Dolphin Research Program — is dedicated to research and conservation of dolphins and their habitat. Community Foundation of Sarasota County Giving Partner Profile available here.

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