SEA 



SCIENCE 



Miclmel Halmiiiski Scott D. Taylor 



Bill Foster ofHatteras attests that dolphins are attracted to commercial fishing vessels. Kim Urian reviews slides to identify individual dolphins. 



"This project is an example of what FRG 

 does best," Read says, "having government, 

 fishermen and researchers working together to 

 solve a common problem." 



For Foster, the project was an opportunity 

 to confirm what he had witnessed about 

 bottlenose dolphin abundance and to contribute 

 data to help guide fishery management. 



WHY STUDY THE BOTTLENOSE? 



People find bottlenose dolphins inherently 

 fascinating. With brains nearly as large as 

 human brains, the bottlenose is, by our 

 standards, very intelligent. Easily trainable, 

 they are the species most often seen in 

 oceanariums. With large, wide-set eyes, a 

 mouth seemingly set in a perpetual smile and a 

 propensity for graceful gymnastics, dolphins 

 just enthrall us. 



And we fancy they like us, too. Since the 

 Greek god Apollo became a hero at sea by 

 assuming the form of a dolphin, legends have 

 persisted about the animals guiding ships to 

 safety. 



Pragmatist Foster calls such romantic 

 notions "the Flipper view," from the once- 

 popular TV show whose star was a bottlenose. 



Sublirninally, the show may have given an 

 unintentional nod to the animal's relationship 

 to horses by having Flipper give the 

 occasional ride to humans. 



Read says dolphins descended from 

 land mammals, some of whom returned to 

 the sea 50 to 55 million years ago. Those 

 remaining on land evolved into ungulates, a 

 group that includes hippos, cows and horses. 



But our fascination for dolphins is not 

 the most pressing reason for a study on 

 species abundance. Dolphins face dangers 

 that present unique management problems. 



Foster personally attests that dolphins 

 are attracted to fishing boats — a fatal 

 attraction when they get tangled in gear and 

 drown, he says. In fact, Foster says he has 

 seen what he believes is a change in dolphin 

 behavior over the last 10 years or so, with 

 more approaching boats looking for food. He 

 attributes this to people feeding dolphins, a 

 practice now illegal under the Marine 

 Mammal Protection Act 



Managing fishing activities in areas of 

 dolphin concentrations is a major reason for 

 studying abundance of the animal. Results 

 from this photo-ID study indicate that some 



of our assumptions about dolphin populations 

 may have been wrong. 



THE QUESTION OF ABUNDANCE 



Coastal visitors and residents became 

 alarmed when, in 1987 and 1988, bottlenose 

 dolphins began washing up on shores all along 

 the eastern United States. "We tend to think of 

 these animals as ecological sentinels," Read 

 says, and people began worrying about water 

 quality and whether there was a danger to 

 humans. 



The die-off was determined to be the 

 result of a morbillivims, which is similar to 

 distemper in dogs and is not a danger to 

 humans. The damage to dolphins was deemed 

 great, however. By some estimates, 50 percent 

 of the bottlenose dolphin population of the 

 eastern shore was lost to the vims, and the 

 species was listed as depleted in the federal 

 Marine Mammals Protection Act. 



Yet Foster notes that in years since the die- 

 off, "to people living up and down the coast, it 

 looked like as many (dolphins) as ever." 



The problem according to Read, is that 

 there was a lack of good surveys before the die- 

 off, so there was "a lot of uncertainty about the 



28 SUMMER 2001 



