New to DCP? Curious about who we are and what we do? Be like this bottlenose dolphin and backflip yourself to our first Zoom meeting for an introduction and short Q&A session.
Ideal for 13+, but all ages welcome.
15 minutes presentation + 15 minutes for Q&A
Thursday, April 2, 11:00 a.m.
You may wonder why you are seeing a blog post about a giant reef fish and what it has to do with dolphins. Quite simply, the answer is “conservation”! With all of our oceans in trouble, and the extinction of animal species hardly making news anymore, it becomes important for each one of us to help, or consider why we have not helped. Whether it’s a common bottlenose dolphin or an endangered Goliath Grouper, we all have an obligation to tread lightly on our blue planet’s other inhabitants and treat them with care.
In this special podcast episode celebrating 20 years of the Dolphin Communication Project, Laura and Justin interview Kelly Melillo-Sweeting, Bimini Research Manager and all-around awesome scientist. Kel explains the findings form her recently published article on laterality in bottlenose dolphins – that is, a preference that dolphins seem to have for the right side of their bodies when hunting for prey in the sand.
Our last day began bright and sunny! We had a good session with the dolphins though they were more into their own thing today. There was much less surface activity but there was some neat underwater action. Elli spent quite a bit of time playing with a small bit of seaweed – mouthing it and hiding it from other dolphins.
We woke to a calmed sea and a quiet morning. The early morning data collection session included lots of surface activity – tail slaps and rolling socializing by several dolphins.
Our day began with a show from both the sun and the moon! And that meant no rain! And, the underwater visibility was superb! All these factors, plus socializing dolphins, led to a 50-minute early morning data collection session! There were lots of tail slaps (regular and belly up positions!) and several fast swims and chases observed at the surface. Champ was hanging out with French except when he and Lenca zoomed in front of the MVA! Ronnie and Stan were slow swimming and socializing for the last 10-15 minutes of the session.
Another good session for data collection was had this morning. It was overcast with a light rain, but the underwater visibility was good and facilitated about 30 min of video data. We watch the video collected each day and it offers a different perspective to collecting the data from above water during the sessions. You can see so much more from the underwater video. It’s like a whole other world watching how the dolphins interact and sometimes include Kathleen in their games.
We got what we wished for last night … no rain and decent underwater visibility allowed for a 34-minute underwater data collection session at Bailey’s Key this morning! We saw just about everyone except French and Champ underwater. Tank spent time with his mom, Bailey, as well as with Stan. You can see Bailey and Tank in this photo. The underwater current was stronger than yesterday, which gave Kathleen a strong workout! And the dolphins were social and active. It was a good morning!
Nicole went to Maya Key today with the AKR picnic team.
We woke to the sound of the surf but not the patter of rain drops! The rain had stopped in the night, if only long enough for our data collection session! I was in the water by 7:05 AM after having introduced Nicole to the dolphins from above the water at Bailey’s Key. You can see Stan and two friends waiting for me to enter the water in this blog photo.
We, and by we, I mean Nicole and me, are in a room on Anthony’s Key where the waves and wind are pounding and liquid is falling from the sky! We are settled in and hoping the rain stops for tomorrow’s data collection session. Sadly, the student group had to postpone their week field course with DCP to Roatan for this week. This decision was made yesterday afternoon.
