Scientist at Work Blog: Don't Feed Wild Dolphins (Even if They Beg)

Tara Thean, a biology major at Princeton University, writes from Sarasota Bay in Florida, where she is studying signature whistle development in wild bottlenose dolphins.

Friday, May 11

The Sarasota Bay dolphins saved the best for last, and our final focal follow of the week turned out to be our smoothest. We attached the DTAG tracking devices to the dolphins around 2 p.m. and followed them from a safe distance to collect behavioral data while the DTAGs recorded their whistles. These dolphins were particularly cooperative, swimming synchronously and at a moderate pace, making them easy to track. Their tags came off around 4:30 p.m., which was exactly when we had programmed the electronics to release them. It felt great that we didn?t lose any dolphins or DTAGs today.

On the tracking boat, each of the eight crew members has a role during a focal follow. Our skipper is Katie McHugh, a Chicago Zoological Society postdoctoral scientist. She navigates, drives the boat and gives the team instructions. The rest of us record behavioral data; time the recordings; measure the bearing of the dolphins from our vessel, Nai?a; mark way points; or keep an eye on the focal animals to make sure we don?t lose track of them. We also leave someone in charge of a DSLR camera to take photographs of the dolphins whenever they surface to breathe, which occurs about twice a minute. This provides us with a visual record of which dolphins were present, what they were doing, and how many companions they were traveling with. Photographs become particularly useful when our focal animals join other groups of dolphins ? trying to identify and record the behavior of five or six dolphins at the same time can get confusing ? and also tells us which dolphins regularly associate with one another. We take about two gigabytes worth of photo data per day.

That said, I?ve been amazed throughout the week at Katie?s ability to identify dolphins without relying on photographs at all. She simply looks at their dorsal fins in the two or so seconds that they spend at the water?s surface each time they breathe, recognizing individuals by the nicks and notches. One of our Tuesday focals was christened ?Bent High Nicks? because his fin is slightly bent and has, well, high nicks. Katie showed me a catalog of the different fins of all the dolphins in the Sarasota Bay community, but I doubt I could tell them apart even after closely examining the catalog.

This time, our dolphins ? a 28-year-old female named Lightning and her male calf, Boomer ? took us to the very shallow waters at Bean Point on the northern tip of Anna Maria Island. Tourists and Sarasota Bay residents lay on the beach, and fishing boats languidly floated by mere meters from our boat. While the beachgoers didn?t seem to notice the dolphins, the fishermen certainly did; thankfully, they limited their interactions with the animals to mere observation from a distance. Human feeding of dolphins is a major problem around Sarasota, which is a popular tourist and recreation spot for its well-groomed beaches and scenic drives. In 2011, Katie observed 6,000 boats potentially interacting with dolphins over 100 hours of observation. During this time, an adult male named Beggar was fed at least 520 items, including human snack foods, beer, hot dogs and fruit. Beggar doesn?t make things any easier ? he has developed a habit of approaching boats and trying to solicit food and attention from people on them.

Though these interactions are illegal under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, they have proved difficult to prevent. Katie and her colleagues tried distributing ?dolphin-friendly fishing and viewing tips? cards to local businesses and boat rental companies last year. Several years ago this same effort led to a 30 percent reduction in interactions, but this time there was very little reduction in human feeding of the dolphins afterward. The only thing that worked seemed to be law enforcement presence by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in the area, which made the activity drop to almost zero. This produced an almost immediate improvement in the dolphins? behavior; they didn?t initiate as many interactions when they realized they were not being rewarded for begging.

The research team is hoping that a ?don?t feed wild dolphins? public service announcement produced by the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program and others will help to reduce the problem. Human feeding of wild dolphins is bringing dolphins into contact with anglers and their gear, and leading to increases in serious dolphin injuries and deaths.

And what about our own interactions with the dolphins as researchers? We?ve tried hard to make sure our DTAGs are as inconspicuous to the dolphins as we could make them. These tags are the fruits of a 27-year effort by the marine mammal expert Peter Tyack to find ways to record sounds from individual wild dolphins. The earliest tags were too large and could be used only on large whales, but the latest ones are small ? light enough to float in water ? and are constructed so that the dolphins can release them easily if at all bothered by them. Very few of the dolphins have shown any sign of being disturbed by the tags, particularly the ones used to being followed and examined from time to time. As one of my team members said at the beginning of the week, ?You can almost hear them whistling, ?It?s that time of the year again.??

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