Interning at the Wild Dolphin Project

For current students, whether that’s as an undergraduate or graduate student, we offer an internship program to gain hands-on experience working as a dolphin field biologist! So what’s it like and what can you expect to learn? Read on. Heading to Bahamas Interns arrive to greet the crew at our

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Bonus Sightings : False Killer Whale or Pilot Whale

On our most recent trip to the Bahamas, we had the incredible chance to view a relatively rare marine mammal — the false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens). These sea wolves are social, intelligent, hunt in packs, and are found in deep offshore waters. They are also entirely black. Adult females

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Dolphin Detective

Much of our long-term work studying dolphins in the Bahamas relies on identifying individuals in the population. By tracking individuals we can understand patterns in relationships, communication, and behavior differences between sexes and age classes, among many other things. To do this, sometimes requires a bit of detective work. We

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Meet the Board: Vice President, Drew Mayer

Drew’s heart has always belonged to the natural world, but by age 23 he joined Shearson/American Express and found himself on Wall Street for the next 20 years where he developed into an investment manager specializing in pattern recognition and what is now known as algorithmic trading at Prudential-Bache and UBS. However, in 2004

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WDP Research Associate Studies Shy, Elusive Species in the Pacific NW.

Little is known about the harbor porpoise, including their social structure. That’s why Cindy Elliser, Ph.D., research director and founder of Pacific Mammal Foundation (PacMam), launched a research project in 2014 to study this small coastal species off Fidalgo Island in Washington State. She recently published the first 3 years

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Studying Behavior: From Observing To Understanding

At the Wild Dolphin Project, we’ve studied everything from dolphin communication, to social structure, genetics and ecology. One of the most common fields we cover is animal behavior, to examine topics such as interspecies aggression, feeding, and even teaching. In addition to gaining insight into the behavior of a species,

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WDP in the Bahamas: A review

We know a lot of you have followed our work for awhile now — some of you since the very beginning —  and some of you have even been out with us on research expeditions. For the start of the new year, we’d like to  provide a review of what

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10 Fascinating Dolphin Facts

This year, our blog has covered everything from highlighting aggressive behaviors to a“creature feature” on a unique species of dolphin, like the Amazon River Dolphin.  So, to wrap up the end of the year, this month’s blog is going to highlight 10 fun facts about dolphins. For instance, did you

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Florida Day December 2nd

During our off season, September through April, we try to get out and monitor the SE Florida coast populations of Atlantic spotted dolphins and bottlenose dolphins. We have a NMFS permit to survey the SE Florida coast from Jupiter down to the Florida Keys.    We try to get out

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Sargassum Seaweed, a Favorite Dolphin Toy

We talk a lot about sargassum seaweed being a favorite toy for the dolphins we study in the Bahamas, but what exactly does that mean? For our blog this month, we want to share more about this special seaweed, how the dolphins use it, and how we use it to

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