The local dolphin community has had a record year for babies -- with 19 calves documented. Since the initiation of our research in October 1970, SDRP has documented births by female dolphins ranging in age from 6 to 48 years, including calves birthed by the oldest-known bottlenose dolphin, Nicklo, who is now 67.

One of this year's calves is the first-born of a dolphin named Nellie, a female we disentangled from plastic line that was embedded around her body in 2010. At the time of the rescue, she was just a few months old herself. Neither Nellie nor her new calf would exist were it not for our rescue efforts -- a fact that points to the positive impact that our program has on our local dolphin community.

Generally speaking, successful calving years are good news for

Calving season in Sarasota Bay peaks during late spring and summer. Mothers are typically pregnant for 12.5 months. Labor usually lasts 45 minutes to a few hours. Newborns range between 42 to 52 inches long, weigh between 30 to 45 pounds and are typically born tail first. During the first few months, calves are usually darker than adults and feature creases on their sides called "fetal folds." The creases -- highlighted in this 2015 photo -- are due to folding in the uterus and usually disappear within six months. It is also common for a calf's dorsal fin and tail flukes to be pliable during the first few days after birth. Two mothers that the SDRP has followed have given birth to 10 calves to date. Through paternity testing, we have found resident males that have sired up to seven calves within the community.

the health of our local ecosystem. Bottlenose dolphins are sentinels of the health of the coastal ecosystem in Sarasota. They breathe the same air, swim in the same waters and eat the same fish we do. Because of our consistent long-term research, our local bottlenose dolphins also serve as a reference population for NOAA and other research partners worldwide.

The Chicago Zoological Society recently received a $1 million, five-year grant from the Charles and Margery Barancik Foundation to support the continuation of our long-term dataset to help detect and monitor threats to ecosystem health and provide benchmarks for at-risk dolphin populations elsewhere.  

For example, of the pregnancies we have detected during dolphin health assessments in Sarasota Bay, 83 percent of them have led to births we have been able to document during later visual surveys when we have seen the mothers swimming alongside new calves.

This stands in sharp contrast to the 20- percent success documented during comparable research in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, which experienced heavy oiling from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The low percentage of success points to the death of prenatal and dolphin calves as one of the major impacts of the spill.

Although having a record number of births is good news, it's important for us to remember that naïve newborn dolphins lack the skills and experience to avoid boats and have to surface more frequently to breathe than older dolphins. Mothers can also be more distracted with newborns and not always able to get out of the way of approaching boats. Dolphins along the central west coast of Florida frequent shallow waters where they may be unable to dive below approaching boats.

 

Here's wishing you fair winds -- not of the hurricane variety -- and following seas!

 

Joy has been observed more than 70 times since her birth in July 2015. She is the second calf of Holly and the grandcalf of Big Shout, who we have been observing since 1992. The dolphins from this lineage tend to use the northern parts of Sarasota Bay (Palma Sola Bay and Anna Maria Sound) as well as the Manatee River and Terra Ceia Bay. When Joy was only about 11 months old, she narrowly escaped a shark encounter which left a distinctive slice and hole near the top of her fin that will help us continue to identify her after she leaves her mother.