Florida Work Day 9-19-2018

The Bahamas summer field season has come to an end, but that doesn’t mean our days on the water are over. We also conduct surveys along part of our Florida coast under an NMFS permit. On Wednesday last week we took advantage of the calm, glassy waters and went searching

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2018 Field Season: Trip 9

Trip 9 By: Cassie Volker, Research Assistant I can’t believe I am writing the last blog entry for the 2018 field season, man it flew by! But we couldn’t have had a better way to end the season. Trip 9 started out with a few quick encounters with some Bimini

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2018 Field Season: Trip 8 & E.A.R. update

TRIP 8 – E.A.R. work and finding our missing dolphins! By Dr. Denise Herzing Well, after reviewing two months of E.A.R. (Ecological Acoustic Recorder) data we began seeing a clear pattern for one of our locations.  Using this knowledge, we set out on Trip 8 to find some of the

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2018: An Intern’s Perspective

I lived aboard the Research Vessel Stenella as an intern with the Wild Dolphin Project for the first trip of the 2018 field season. We embarked from the New Port Cove Marine Center in Palm Beach, Florida and set out for our anchor point in Bahamian waters. As we crossed

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Dolphins and Drones— Studying Behavior from Above

As any scientist will tell you, field work is no walk in the park.  In our case, the research depends on calm enough weather, a smoothly running boat, and the agenda of wild dolphins.  The ocean could be as flat as glass— but if the dolphins aren’t interested in our

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Can you hear me now?

Watch the deployment on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IWNKRhyO5GI Researchers all over the world have turned to Passive Acoustic Monitoring (P.A.M.) as a technique to record underwater audio signals from marine mammals.  PAM systems are typically deployed and sit on the bottom or hang in the water column attached to the bottom at various

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6th Trip of 2017

Trip 6:  July 18 — July 27 After enduring some rough weather earlier in the season, Trip 6 of our 2017 field season was a dream!  We ran into part of our Southern group near Grand Bahama- Naia was with her little calf Nala, accompanied by Venti, Flotsam and Vivid.  Down in Bimini

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4th Trip of 2017

Trip 2017-04 (June 20th – June 29th) What is the most difficult part of studying dolphin acoustic communication you ask?  Well, it’s really quite difficult to determine who is vocalizing on the underwater video.  Because we are in the water and swim along with the dolphins as they are behaving,

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3rd Trip of 2017

Trip 3 (June 6th – 15th) Crossing the Gulf Stream ahead of a front line entering Florida we knew we might be in for a stormy trip.  Indeed, we had to take shelter for two days in the protection of the West End harbor.  Although summer is our best time

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2nd Trip of 2017

Trip 2017-02:  May 23 — May 31 Though our second trip of the season began with a day of stormy weather, the wind soon died down and before long we were heading south to Bimini!  Five great interns joined us for the trip, and everyone enjoyed stopping at Hens and Chicks

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