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

Continue reading

How Hurricanes Impact Wildlife

Our hearts break to think of what Floridians are experiencing right now due to Cat 4 Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S. As Ian tears across the state of Florida, leaving a path of destruction and loss, we wanted to share the impacts

Continue reading

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

Continue reading

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

Continue reading

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

Continue reading

Meet the Board: President, Axel Stepan

We’ve decided to introduce you to our Board of Directors, to help you get a sense of the people who help the Wild Dolphin Project fulfill our mission! First up, is our current president, Axel Stepan.     After receiving his MBA in 1999, Axel started his career as an

Continue reading

Plastic is Bad. Real Bad.

In the Bahamas, spotted dolphins play with sargassum seaweed. They play games of keep away and chase, passing the seaweed effortlessly from their rostrum, to pectoral fin to fluke. But sadly, they also play with plastic — we witness it. So far this summer, we’ve already observed dolphins playing with

Continue reading

Looking Back on 2019

As 2019 comes to an end, we decided to reflect back on our year at the Wild Dolphin Project. It was a season filled with good weather, amazing dolphin behavior and unique sightings of marine life, including whale sharks and sperm whales! For the 2019 field season, we had 69

Continue reading

2019 Field Season: Trip 7, 8, 9

End of Season Blog – A challenging end to our field season. After a spectacular season of trips and data collection during May, June and July, our August trips were challenged by weather and other issues. We escaped the brunt of Hurricane Dorian but with the approaching storm we ended

Continue reading

Trip 4: Smooth Seas and Lots of Dolphins

Writing and Photos By Bethany Augliere   I’ll just start by saying that Trip 4 was fantastic! We had spectacular weather, amazing dolphin encounters, and a great group of people.   Grand Bahama Island On our crossing over to Grand Bahama Island, some of the crew onboard saw false killer

Continue reading