Research update

Why is everyone suddenly trying to decode animal communication?  You may have seen the headlines “Machine learning attempts to decode sperm whales” and “The animals are talking. What does it mean?”.  Why now?  And how? The answer is really pretty simple. Suddenly we have new and powerful computer tools, machine

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Meet the Team: Hayley Knapp

Meet Hayley Knapp, research assistant for the Wild Dolphin Project. Hayley Knapp grew up in Wichita, Kansas and water has always been an important part of her life, whether it was beach vacations, sailing on the lake, or competitively swimming. She in fell in love with dolphins when she was

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2023 Trip 7

Trip 7: the final trip of the 2023 season! We were thrilled to be back out in the Bahamas for the last trip of the summer, and even more excited to have our colleague Dr. Cindy Elliser of PacMam joining us! It has been over 10 years since she’s been

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Sometimes Fish are Toys, Not Food

Brittini A. Hill Dolphins will play with just about anything they can find. You may have seen pictures of the spotted dolphins playing with sargassum, scarves, sea cucumbers, or even plastic. On our last trip to the Bahamas, we came across four dolphins playing with something we don’t see quite

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Can Anyone Hear Me?

The Wild Dolphin Project was started by Dr. Denise Herzing back in 1985. Since then Dr. Herzing, along with her colleagues and graduate students, has put out multiple peer reviewed research papers on the behavior, acoustics, and ecology of the two species we study in the Bahamas: the Atlantic spotted

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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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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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New Research Alert! Shifting Home Ranges in Spotted Dolphins

Recently, WDP graduate student Brittini Hill completed her master’s degree and thesis research. So, WDP sat down with Brittini to talk to her about her research and why she was interested in this question. Check it out. WDP: What was the goal of this research paper? BH: In 2013, an

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Meet the Team: Research Associate, Bethany Augliere

For the last decade, you’ve probably seen photos of and photos taken by our research associate, photographer and social media wiz Bethany Augliere. Now’s your chance to learn a little bit more about her! Bethany grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C., but always had a passion for the

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Meet the Team: Executive Assistant Melissa Infante

Melissa grew up in South Florida and always had a passion for the outdoors and animals, spending much of her days surfing and riding horses. In 2015, she was looking for a career change and for something with a sense of purpose. She saw the ad on Craigslist for an

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