Why Are So Many Dolphins Beaching Themselves?

From New England to Peru, an unprecedented number of dolphins have been beaching themselves in recent weeks, and experts are grappling as to why.

On Cape Cod alone, 177 short-beaked common dolphins have stranded and 124 have died, according to an Associated Press report. The report goes on to say that the total is nearly five times the average of 37 common dolphins that have stranded annually there during the last 12 years.

More than 200 dolphins have washed up dead on the beaches of Chiclayo, Peru, according to The Blaze. In that case, dead anchovies were also found. Since these small fish are prey, the dolphins may have become ill as a result of eating them, but the deaths remain a mystery.

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/18520-stranded-common-dolphins-mystery.html

81 dolphins have died along Cape Cod shore

CAPE COD, Mass., Feb. 2 (UPI) -- At least 81 dolphins have died along the Cape Cod shore since early January in a series of unexplained incidents, U.S. officials and wildlife rescuers said.

More than 100 dolphins have been found stranded along the rocky Massachusetts shoreline, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokeswoman Teri Rowles told CNN. The International Fund for Animal Welfare said the dolphins are sometimes washing ashore in groups of as many as 10.

Rescuers have been transporting live dolphins to the outer Cape to be returned to the ocean.

IFAW program director A.J. Cady said the number of recent incidents is disturbing. "Cape Cod sees an average of 120 dolphin strandings per year," Cady told CNN.

Recent changes in water temperature could be a contributing factor, Wellfleet, Mass., harbormaster Michael Flanagan said.

"Usually in the winter, the harbor ices over and inhibits the animals from coming close to the shore," Flanagan said. "But now that the water is warmer, we're seeing lots more dolphins washing up than ever before."



Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/02/02/81-dolphins-have-died-along-Cape-Cod-shore/UPI-44041328211780/#ixzz1lM2q0rz1

Biologists studying endangered Brazil dolphins find albino baby among them

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian biologists have found an extremely rare example of an albino dolphin among an endangered species that lives off the southern coast of South America.

The research group, based at Univille university in Santa Catarina, said Thursday that it was the first recorded instance of an albino in the pontoporia blainvillei species, a very shy type of dolphin that rarely jumps out of the water. It’s known in Brazil as Toninha and in Argentina and Uruguay as the La Plata or Franciscana dolphin.

Camilla Meirelles Sartori, the lead biologist of Project Toninhas, said she first saw the white calf with pinkish fins at the end of October. Her group photographed him in early November.

“We were surprised, shocked,” Sartori said. “It’s very small, and the color is really different. We didn’t know what it was at first.”

Sartori said the baby was with an adult, probably its mother. The young live on their mother’s milk until they are six months old and remain dependent on the adult until they’re a year old.

The species is endangered. Its dolphins have long, thin snouts and get easily tangled in fishing nets. They can drown or die of stress if not quickly released, Sartori said.

Since Herman Melville created the albino whale Moby Dick in 1851, rare albino marine mammals have held a special fascination.

Read more here ...

Two dolphins who died after two-day techno party at marine park 'were fed drugs by ravers'

A pair of dolphins may have died after being fed drugs by ravers after a second animal died.

Police looking into the deaths in Connyland, Lipperswil, Switzerland, initially thought the deafening music from the rave may have killed dolphins Shadow and Chelmers.

But zoo vets are awaiting toxicology test results to see if they were poisoned by narcotics thrown into their enclosure during the rave.

Shadow was found soon after the event but Chelmers died two days later after a 'drawn out and painful' death.

Connyland keeper Nadja Gasser told local media: 'The death was very drawn out and painful. The death went on for over an hour. It was horrendous. I have not been able to sleep since.'

Read more here ...

Dolphins 'decompress like humans'

Scientists have found tiny bubbles beneath the blubber of dolphins that have beached themselves.

The bubbles were discovered by taking ultrasound scans of the animals within minutes of stranding off Cape Cod, US.

The team's findings help confirm what many researchers have long suspected: dolphins avoid the bends by taking long, shallow decompression dives after feeding at depth.

The study is reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Many biologists believe that marine mammals do not struggle, as human divers do, with decompression sickness - "the bends" - when ascending from great depths.

In humans, breathing air at the comparatively high pressures delivered by scuba equipment causes more nitrogen to be absorbed into the blood and the body's tissues, and this nitrogen comes back out as divers ascend.

If divers ascend too quickly, the dissolved nitrogen forms bubbles in the body, causing decompression sickness.

But marine mammals such as whales, dolphins, and seals are highly adept at dealing with the pressures of the deep.
They slow their hearts, collapse the tiny air-filled chambers in their lungs, and channel blood to essential organs - like the brain - to conserve oxygen, and limit the build-up of nitrogen bubbles in the blood that happens at depth.

Read on...

Coal port could wipe out dolphin pod: WWF

A unique pod of rare Australian dolphins could be wiped out by a coal port planned for an island just off the central Queensland coast, WWF Australia warns.

Researchers believe the 70-strong snubfin dolphin population at the mouth of the Fitzroy River, 40km north of Gladstone, is genetically distinct from other Australian snubfins.

The native snubfin, discovered in 2005, inhabits rivers and coasts of northern Australia and is believed to be rare.

The WWF says an Xstrata coal port planned for Balaclava Island on the mouth of the Fitzroy River could easily wipe out the local snubfin population over the next 10 to 20 years.

"Even just the loss of just one dolphin per year is enough to trigger the extinction of that local population," WWF spokesman Richard Leck said.

The dolphins currently feed in the relatively pristine coastal mangroves of Balaclava Island, Mr Leck said.

"The unfortunate situation is that the habitat they rely on is exactly the type of habitat that's likely to be destroyed or significantly damaged by the Balaclava Island development," he said.

What's more, he expects the Australian snubfin dolphin to be declared a threatened species shortly.
Xstrata's environmental impact statement for its Balaclava Island coal port is expected to be released early next year.

Mr Leck said the port would almost certainly have an impact on local marine life.

"When you're seeing how badly the health is in Gladstone Harbour at the moment the last thing we want to be doing is having that type of impact up and down the coastline," he said.

"At some point you have to say right, we just can't keep industrialising the whole Great Barrier Reef coastline."


Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/coal-port-could-wipe-out-dolphin-pod-wwf-20111014-1lnoc.html#ixzz1aqvkgdSM

Dolphin baby given 'ticking off'

Dolphin watchers in west Wales have spotted unusual behaviour as a female repeatedly tossed a newborn calf into the air.

They say it is the first time such 'violent' behaviour has been seen by a mother in Cardigan Bay although males dolphins have been known to kill their young.

Dr Peter Evans, from the Sea Watch Foundation, said it might have been a case of a severe telling off due to the two to three day old calf wandering too far away.

"She was nosing it away in a particular direction, then suddenly she threw the infant right up into the air, and then did this about three times," he explained.

"Normally when you see something like an animal thrown into the air it's an aggressive action by a male dolphin.

"In this instance it was the mother doing it (the attacking), and she was doing it very rigorously.

"It was moving away, several times, from the mother, and perhaps it was straying too far and she wanted to keep a close eye on it."

Dr Evans said this may have been because there were humans nearby or other adult dolphins.

"It was possible a got a strong scolding because of that, and the animal was unharmed at the end," he added.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-14921415

Dolphins call each other by name

Dave the dolphin whistles, and his friend Alan whistles back. We can't yet decipher their calls, but some of the time Dave may be calling: "Alan! Alan! Alan! Alan!"

Stephanie King of the University of St Andrews, UK, and colleagues monitored 179 pairs of wild bottlenose dolphins off the Florida coast between 1988 and 2004. Of these, 10 were seen copying each other's signature whistles, which the dolphins make to identify themselves to each other.

The behaviour has never been documented before, and was only seen in pairs composed of a mother and her calf or adults who would normally move around and hunt together.

The copied whistles changed frequency in the same way as real signature whistles, but either started from a higher frequency or didn't last as long, suggesting Dave was not merely imitating Alan.

Copying only happened when a pair had become separated, which leads King to speculate that they were trying to get back together. She believes the dolphins were mimicking another animal's whistle as a way of calling them by name.

King presented her research last week at the summer conference of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour in St Andrews.

Justin Gregg of the Dolphin Communication Project in Old Mystic, Connecticut, remains cautious, and points out that the dolphins may copy the signature whistles simply because they hear them a lot. To be sure that they are usingthe whistles to refer to a specific individual, researchers would need to show that dolphins responded when their signature whistle was copied, he says.

There is no other species that is known to combine signature calls and vocal mimicry in this way, says Phyllis Lee of the University of Stirling, UK. "But I bet parrots could do it," she adds. "They have very long lifespans and complex social structures, and they do a lot of mimicry."

Dolphins don't whistle

Signature they may be, but it appears that dolphins' whistles aren't actually whistles. A true whistle relies on pushing air through a chamber, but a similar sound can be produced by a vibrating membrane.

To find out which way dolphins do it, Peter Madsen of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues recorded a bottlenose dolphin whistling after breathing helium. The sounds were largely the same whether the dolphin was breathing helium or air. If the dolphin was really whistling, the helium would have changed the frequency of the sound (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0701).

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=4348728589329576621

Fish-catching trick may be spreading among dolphins

PERTH, Australia (Reuters) - Dolphins in one western Australian population have been observed holding a large conch shell in their beaks and using it to shake a fish into their mouths -- and the behavior may be spreading.

Researchers from Murdoch University in Perth were not quite sure what they were seeing when they first photographed the activity, in 2007, in which dolphins would shake conch shells at the surface of the ocean.

"It's a fleeting glimpse -- you look at it and think, that's kind of weird," said Simon Allen, a researcher at the university's Cetacean Research Unit.

"Maybe they're playing, maybe they're socializing, maybe males are presenting a gift to a female or something like that, maybe the animals are actually eating the animal inside."

But researchers were more intrigued when they studied the photos and found the back of a fish hanging out of the shell, realizing that the shaking drained the water out of the shells and caused the fish that was sheltering inside to fall into the dolphins' mouths.

A search through records for dolphins in the eastern part of Shark Bay, a population that has been studied for nearly 30 years, found roughly half a dozen sightings of similar behavior over some two decades.

Then researchers saw it at least seven times during the four-month research period starting this May, Allen said.

"There's a possibility here -- and it's speculation at this stage -- that this sort of change from seeing it six or seven times in 21 years to seeing it six or seven times in three months gives us that tantalizing possibility that it might be spreading before our very eyes," he added.

"It's too early to say definitively yet, but we'll be watching very closely over the next couple of field seasons."

The Shark Bay dolphin population is already unusual for having developed two foraging techniques, one of which involves the dolphin briefly beaching itself to grab fish after driving them up onto the shore.

The other is "sponging" -- in which the dolphins break off a conical bit of sponge and fit it over their heads like a cap, shielding them as they forage for food on the sea floor.

But both of these spread "vertically," mainly through the female dolphin population, from mother to daughter. The intriguing thing about this new behavior with the conch shells is that it might be spreading "horizontally," Allen said.

"If it spreads horizontally, then we would expect to see it more often and we'd expect to see it between 'friends'," he added, noting that dolphins are known for having preferences in terms of companions and whom they spend time with.

"Most of the sightings from this year are in the same habitat where we first saw it in 2007, and a couple of the individuals this year are known to associate with the ones that we saw doing it a year or two ago."

The next step would be not only to observe the behavior again in another season but also to try and gather evidence Of deliberate actions on the part of the dolphins.

"If we could put some shells in a row or put them facing down or something like that and then come back the next day, if we don't actually see them do it but find evidence that they've turned the shell over or make it into an appealing refuge for a fish, then that implies significant forward planning on the dolphins' parts," Allen said.

"The nice idea is that there is this intriguing possibility that they might manipulate the object beforehand. Then that might change using the shell as just a convenient object into actual tool use," he added.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Alex Richardson)

http://news.yahoo.com/fish-catching-trick-may-spreading-among-dolphins-080748681.html

Dolphin With Prosthetic Tail Gets Ready For Waves Of Publicity

Tourists who visit Hollywood are often disappointed when they discover that the celebrities they love aren't exactly walking up and down the street.

That's not the case in Clearwater Beach, Fla., where visitors are guaranteed to see at least one celebrity: Winter the dolphin, the star and subject of the upcoming movie, "Dolphin Tale," which stars Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd and Harry Connick Jr.

Winter, who turns six in October, lost her tail at three months old when she was caught in a blue crab trap off the coast of Florida and the blood supply to her tail was cut off by the rope.

Doctors at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, where she was taken after her injuries, thought she might die, but, amazingly, she lived.

Initially, it was thought she'd have to learn to swim without a tail, which doctors feared could cause scoliosis, as that would require her to move her back side-to-side instead of the normal up-and-down method.

"Without a tail, she swims side-to-side and that overproduces some muscles while underusing others," Kelly Martin, one of Winter's five trainers told HuffPost Weird News.

However, Kevin Carroll, vice president of prosthetics at Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics, who had previously designed prosthetics for dogs, an ostrich and a duck, volunteered to help Winter by designing a special tail prosthetic for her.

This was more than five years ago, and since then, Winter's fame has spread far and wide and has helped the aquarium's attendance.

"Five years ago, we had 7,000 guests in the month of July," said Krista Rosado, director of marketing at Clearwater Marine Aquarium. "We had 35,000 visitors this July."

Rosado said she expects even more people will visit after "Dolphin Tale" opens nationally Sept. 23. The aquarium is trying to piggyback on the waves of publicity generated by the release by letting visitors know they can see a real-life star of a Hollywood movie seven days a week.

And, in the off-chance Winter is unable to perform, Rosado said fans can see the next best thing: her prosthetic tail.

"Winter wears her tail about an hour a day, but people walk around it so you can get up close to it," she told HuffPost Weird News. "There are about 15 versions of it."

The aquarium will also be the site of a special premiere showing on Sept. 21 that will possibly reunite Winter with some of her human castmates.

"We don't know who is going to show," Rosado admitted. "We know Ashley Judd probably won't be there as she's in Prague."

Rosado said she expects the film will impact the aquarium's bottom line, but admits making it affected Winter in other ways.

"Although she is a dolphin who has spent the majority of her life with humans, we had to acclimate her to the filmmaking process by holding up fake cameras around her in the pool starting months before [shooting began]," Rosado said. "Otherwise, her face would have been right up in the camera lens just out of curiosity."

Winter has a chance to make a big splash as a film star in the movie, but Martin, who helps train her, doesn't think success will go to her head.

"So far, she hasn't gotten too big for her britches," Martin told HuffPost Weird News.

But while Martin insists that Winter doesn't engage in the selfish antics of other young starlets, she admits that Winter can have her moods.

"We do watch carefully to see how she's feeling," Martin said. "For instance, if she is not showing up to the platform, we know she's not in the mood to perform."

It goes both ways, though.

Martin started working with Winter right after filming finished and said they had to go through a getting-to-know-you period.

"It's important to establish space for both of us," Martin said. "If she is going to come up on the platform, we both have to feel safe and comfortable."

Since "Dolphin Tale" previews have run before practically every family film for the last six months, there's a buzz attached to the film. Martin said she is aware that Winter's growing popularity will have an effect on her and the aquarium.

"Things are definitely going to change," she said. "But we're excited about this. This will allow people to learn how intelligent dolphins are and also let them know about our effect on them."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/20/dolphin-with-prosthetic-tail_n_927463.html#s330792&title=Animals_In_The

Dolphin hunts with electric sense (via Dawn Holloway)

A South American dolphin is the first "true mammal" to sense prey by their electric fields, scientists suggest.


The researchers first showed that structures on the animal's head were probably sensory organs, then found it could detect electric fields in water.

Electroreception is well known in fish and amphibians, but until now the only mammal example was the platypus.

Writing in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings B, the scientists say other cetaceans may show the same ability.

The Guiana dolphin (Sotalia guianensis) lives around the east coast of South America, and resembles the much more common bottlenose variety.

Like all of the toothed cetaceans, it hunts and locates using sound.

But the researchers have now shown that at close range, it can also sense electrical signals.

They are not as sensitive as sharks and rays, but can detect signals of the same size as those produced in water when fish move their muscles.

"It feeds in the bottom [of the sea] a lot, and it lives in water where there can be a lot of silt and mud suspended," said project leader Wolf Hanke from the University of Rostock, Germany.

"And echolocation doesn't work at very close range, so this is where electrolocation would come in."

Sensible science
Captive Guiana dolphins are rare; but they have been kept at the zoo in Muenster, also in Germany.

The zoo is among those that have been criticised by animal rights campaigners in recent years, who argue against keeping dolphins in captivity.


The researchers became curious about the function of small depressions in the dolphin's rostrum - the forward-projecting part of the head containing the jaws.

When one of the animals died, the rostrum was examined, with tissues being stained to show the structures inside these depressions.

The depressions - known as crypts - carry whiskers when the dolphins are growing in the womb, but the whiskers later drop off.

But the crypts looked as though they were still involved in sensing something.


To see whether they were in fact electroreceptors, the researchers turned to the zoo's single remaining Sotalia.

They trained it to put its head on a "rest station", where electrodes delivered a tiny electrical signal into the water.

When a signal was present, the dolphin received a reward if it swam away; if not, it received a reward for staying put.

Later, a plastic shield was placed above the lines of crypts, blocking any electrical sensing. It remained still every time.

The experiments proved that the Guiana dolphin could sense the electrical signals, and that the crypts were indeed the organs responsible.

The researchers plan next to investigate whether other cetaceans possess the same capacity.

"We believe that they might, as it seems very useful for the dolphins," said Dr Hanke.

"We might in the future make plans to travel to South America to study the dolphins in the wild."

The acid test would be to fit the animals with tags that carry a variety of instruments, and see how they use their novel electric sense to hunt.

The platypus, which also uses electroreception, is a monotreme, a sub-group of mammals that lay eggs.

By Richard Black

Environment correspondent, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14292330

Why Dolphins Wear Sponges

In 1984, researchers spotted dolphins doing something unusual in Shark Bay, Western Australia. When the animals got hungry, they ripped a marine basket sponge from the sea floor and fitted it over their beaks like a person would fit a glove over a hand. The scientists suspected that as the dolphins foraged for fish, the sponges protected their beaks, or rostra, from the rocks and broken chunks of coral that litter the sea floor, making this behavior the first example of tool use in this species.


But why do dolphins go to all of this trouble when they could simply snag a fish from the open sea?

The answer, researchers hypothesize and report online today in PLoS ONE, is that the bottom-dwelling fish are a lot more nutritious. Some species also don't have swim bladders, gas chambers that help other fish control their buoyancy as they travel up and down the water column. In the Bahamas, where dolphins are also known to forage for bottom-dwelling fish, dolphins hunt partly by echolocating these bladders, which give off a strong acoustic signal. That helps the cetaceans find prey even when it's buried in sea sand.

But bottom-dwelling fish, such as barred sandperch, which are favored by some Shark Bay dolphins, don't have swim bladders and so are harder to find with echolocation. The sea floor is not nearly as soft here as it is in the Bahamas, so if dolphins want to probe for these fish, they risk injuring their rostra.

Enter the sea sponge. Some ingenious Shark Bay dolphin figured out that by prodding the sediments with a sponge attached to its beak, it could stir up these swim bladder-less fish without hurting itself.

To find out more about the types of fish that might respond to this "sponging" technique, Eric Patterson, a graduate student in behavioral ecology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., asked a colleague to try it in Shark Bay while he filmed the results. The pair fitted a marine basket sponge on the end of a pole and dove into the same channels where the dolphins hunt. "We had to switch sponges after every five to six dives because they were torn to bits by the sediments," Patterson says. Although not nearly as graceful as sponging dolphins, "which are really elegant in their moves," Patterson says, the human sponger nonetheless managed to scare up a hidden prey fish every 9 minutes. "The prey are numerous and reliable," Patterson says, "and their behavior is so predictable—they always dart out of the sands—that they make this hunting behavior worthwhile for the dolphins."

Patterson has also observed the sponging dolphins. After a fish emerges from its hiding spot, it swims a few meters away and doesn't immediately rebury itself. That interlude gives the dolphin just enough time to drop its sponge, surface to get a breath, and dive again to snag the fish, most of which are about 12 centimeters in length. "They are not a huge prey, but are very nutritious," Patterson says, because fish lacking swim bladders typically have a high lipid content.

Not every dolphin in Shark Bay hunts with sponges. "It's primarily done by females," says Janet Mann, a behavioral ecologist also at Georgetown University and Patterson's dissertation adviser. She believes the female dolphins invented the method because of the "selective pressures they face while raising a calf as long as they do," about 4 to 5 years. "These clever dolphins have figured out a way to target fish that other dolphins cannot," she says, adding that even the local fishermen do not catch, or even know about, this particular species. Mann's previous research has shown that dolphin mothers pass the sponging method to their daughters and some of their sons, rare evidence of a cultural tradition in an animal other than humans. The team has documented three generations of sponging dolphins.

The study provides a "better understanding of the why and how of sponging" by the Shark Bay dolphins, says Louis Herman, a cognitive psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. The work "adds to previously documented" examples of "innovation by this highly intelligent species." Patterson's and Mann's results also "reinforce a pattern" often seen in other tool-using animals, says Simon Reader, a behavioral biologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. "Tool use appears to be almost a last option, taken when other options fail or are unavailable," he says, noting that woodpecker finches in the Galápagos Islands "turn to tool use only in arid areas," wielding cactus spines to extract grubs from tree branches. Using tools takes time and energy, Reader says, and animals tend to rely on them only when there's a guaranteed payoff, such as turning up a fatty fish that most other dolphins (and fishermen) know nothing about.

*This article has been corrected. Researchers first researchers spotted dolphins putting sponges over their rostra in Shark Bay in 1984, not 1991.


by Virginia Morell
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/why-dolphins-wear-sponges.html?ref=hp

Dolphins 'carried body of drowned victim to shore' in July Fourth tragedy

July Fourth weekend ended in tragedy for one family when a man drowned after being caught in an undertow.

The body of 47-year-old Luis Arturo Polanco Morales, of Denham Springs, was found by authorities about ten to 15 feet from the shore line. At first they believed the tide had washed Mr Morales up but witnesses to the sad event at Grand Isle, Louisiana, reported the body had been carried to shore by dolphins.

'I guess it could be possible,' Cesar Zuniga a holidaymaker from McAllen, Texas, told ABC26 News. 'They're mammals. I think they're intelligent enough to do stuff like that.'

Mr Morales, a young girl and another man had been fishing on rocks when the girl fell in, witnesses told Coroner's investigator Tommy Evans. Both men jumped in to rescue the girl.

The other man made it out with her, but Mr Morales was dragged off by the current.

After three hours authorities called off the search. 'About an hour later, we got a phone call when the tide brought him in, and actually, he was 10-15 feet he had drifted in,' Grand Isle Fire Chief, Aubrey Chaisson, said. For Mr Zuniga the story about the dolphins is genuine.

'I guess I call it a miracle, right?' he said. 'I mean, I'm sorry somebody lost their life, but for them to do that to bring the body shore, they’re keeping an eye on us.

'They're keeping an eye on us.'

Chief Chaisson's advice for anyone stuck in an undertow is not to panic. The water will take you a way out, but go with it and it will eventually release you.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2011652/July-Fourth-tragedy-Dolphins-carried-Luis-Arturo-Polanco-Morales-body-shore.html

Zoo's Dolphin Habitat Celebrates 50th Anniversary

March 25, 2011
Kane Farabaugh | Chicago

More than two million people each year visit the Brookfield Zoo’s Seven Seas exhibit in suburban Chicago. The exhibit, celebrating its 50th anniversary, is the oldest inland dolphin habitat in the United States. It focuses on the Chicago Zoological Society’s efforts to promote marine conservation.

Fifty years ago, the only way people in the US. Midwest could see dolphins up close was by visiting the coastline. The Chicago Zoological Society wanted to bring that experience closer to home.

"This was a very groundbreaking facility," said Rita Stacey, curator of the Seven Seas exhibit at Brookfield Zoo. She's worked with dolphins at the zoo for twenty years. "It was the first inland Dolphinarium. It was the first one to use artificial saltwater. We now create our own man-made saltwater here."

That technological advance allowed the zoo to create a permanent habitat for marine mammals far from the ocean. The exhibit, which Stacey said is as close to their natural environment as possible, attracts millions of visitors every year, even when temperatures are below freezing outside.

"This is actually our second building," said Stacey. "Our first building was operated for close to about 25 years. And in that 25 years, we had estimated about 11.5 million people had gone into that facility and saw the dolphins there."

Stacey said the Chicago Zoological Society, which runs the Brookfield Zoo, is one of the leading institutions promoting a better understanding of marine life. She said some research, including how dolphins breed and communicate, is a product of studying dolphins at the zoo.

"There is so much that we have learned in the last 50 years about caring for the dolphins, about the inner workings of their society and their relationships with each other, as well as about anatomy and about how dolphins actually work," said Stacey.

Melissa Zabojnik is a senior keeper at the Seven Seas exhibit. She has been working with dolphins for 10 years, and helps show the mammals to the public.

"We can use the dolphins as ambassadors to teach the public," said Zabojnik. "The zoo’s mission is to inspire conservation leadership, so that’s something that we try to portray in our dolphin shows as well."

The Zoo’s conservation efforts were tested during last year’s Gulf Oil spill. The Chicago Zoological Society’s Dolphin Research Center in Sarasota Florida, a sister facility, saw some changes in the dolphin population in the Gulf.

Zabojnik said their history with the mammals is helping them track the long term environmental effects of the disaster. "Because we’ve gotten to know these animals so well in the past, it helps us in the future by determining if the oil spill has any effect on the future of them….. where the animals spend their time, if they migrate for any reason, if there’s any difference of their health and population year after year because of the oil spill."

The Brookfield Zoo now works with six other U.S. facilities that also are away from coastlines. Together, they promote a better understanding of the world under the sea.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/environment/Zoos-Dolphin-Habitat-Celebrates-50th-Anniversary-118679504.html

Baby dolphin saved after dumped in rice field by tsunami

TOKYO | Wed Mar 23, 2011 5:53am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - A baby dolphin has been rescued in Japan after being dumped in a rice field by a giant tsunami that hit the coast on March 11.

The dolphin was spotted in the flooded field, about 2 km (a mile) from the coast, said Ryo Taira, a pet-shop owner who has been rescuing animals abandoned after the 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami left 23,000 people dead or missing.

"A man passing by said he had found the dolphin in the rice paddy and that we had to do something to save it," the 32-year-old Taira told Reuters.

Taira found the dolphin struggling in the shallow seawater on Tuesday and after failing to net it, waded in to the field, which had yet to be sown with rice, to cradle the 1.2-meter (four foot) animal in his arms.

"It was pretty weak by then, which was probably the only reason we could catch it," he said.

Taira and some friends wrapped the dolphin in wet towels and drove it back to the sea, where they set it free. The dolphin appeared to perk up when it was back in the Pacific, he said.

"I don't know if it will live, but it's certainly a lot better than dying in a rice paddy," Taira told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Robert Birsel and Sanjeev Miglani)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/23/us-japan-dolphin-idUSTRE72M2AI20110323

Woman talks about 600-pound dolphin jumping in boat; spraining her ankle

By AARON HALE
Naples Daily News
Posted March 14, 2011 at 1:30 p.m.

COLLIER COUNTY — An East Naples women said she is happy to be alive after a Sunday boat outing on the Marco River brought an unexpected guest onboard – a fully-grown bottlenose dolphin.

JoAnn Lorek and five companions were on their way to a beach picnic in a 22-foot private boat when the dolphin – reportedly 600 pounds – jumped onto the boat and pinned her ankle.

Though Lorek, a part-time Fiddler’s Creek resident, came away with a sprained ankle and some bruises, it took aid from three response agencies and other volunteers to remove the dolphin from the boat.

As Richard Johnston’s private boat was travelling on the Marco River on Sunday afternoon, Lorek said she and the other occupants noticed active dolphins in the area.

She said no one on her boat was feeding the dolphins, but Johnston slowed the vessel as a precaution.

Lorek said she was looking around for other dolphin activity when one leaped it the air toward the boat.

“I just saw this wall of dolphin,” she said.

Lorek reported that she felt the dolphin graze her head on its way down, probably with its fin, before it landed on her ankle. She said the incident could have been deadly if someone had been standing directly in the dolphin’s path.

Firefighters with the Isles of Capri Fire Control and Rescue District, officials with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Collier County Sheriff’s Office deputies, as well as a few private citizens, worked to rescue the dolphin. However, its weight posed some problems.

“There were 10 full-grown men and we couldn’t lift it,” said Lt. Keith Perry, an Isles of Capri firefighters.

Lorek said at first the dolphin seemed panicked. It shook its flippers so hard it left flipper-shaped bruises on her leg.

It finally relaxed when rescuers covered its eyes.

Since the marine mammal couldn’t be lifted, officials tied a rope around the tail of the dolphin and slid an immobilization board under it. Then they slid the marine mammal toward the end of the boat.

Once the dolphin was halfway off, Perry said the rope was removed and they slid it back into the water, where it swam away without incident.

He said the only injuries to the dolphin seemed to be some superficial cuts.

A similar incident occurred two years ago on the Marco River when a 120-pound dolphin jumped onto a Marco woman’s deck boat. No one was injured in that incident.

Looking forward, Lorek said she doesn’t think Sunday’s incident will dissuade her from future boating trips, but it will ruin this week’s tennis plans.

Staff writer Elysa Batista contributed to story.

Photos and video at: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/mar/14/woman-talks-about-600-pound-dolphin-jumping-boat-s/

Woman injured when dolphin jumps into boat in Florida river

Rescuers treat woman, free dolphin

Posted: 7:52 AM
Last Updated: 2 hours and 46 minutes ago

By: Joey Davis
Elysa Batista

MARCO ISLAND, Fla. - A woman was injured Sunday when a dolphin weighing between 600 and 700 pounds jumped into the deck of a boat on the Marco River.

Isles of Capri Fire spokesman Keith Perry says the 911 call came in 2:44 p.m. when a passenger said the dolphin landed on a woman as it jumped on board.

Firefighters treated the woman, who was not identified, for a sprained ankle.

Rescue officials from the Isles of Capri Fire Department, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Collier County Sheriff's Office used an immobilizing board and rope to pull the large dolphin off the boat and back into the water.

See photos at: http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/state/photos%3A-woman-injured-when-dolphin-jumps-into-boat-in-florida-river

Dolphin detectors installed along Cornish coastline

22 January 2011

Underwater dolphin detectors have been installed along the Cornish coastline.

The seven audio recording devices, known as CPODS (Cetacean and Porpoise Detectors), were installed by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

It hopes that by learning more about where dolphins, whales and porpoises congregate, it can reduce the number killed by fishing nets.

The CPODs are attached to offshore buoys in locations recommended by local fishermen.

An eighth CPOD is due to be floated from a site near St Agnes in the next week.

Abby Crosbie, a conservation officer with the trust, said: "It's essential that we get information from fishermen about the seabed and where to place the CPODS.

"We're protecting these species, unfortunately they are affected by accidental bycatch.

"No-one, not us nor the fishermen, want that to happen."
'Pinger' trial

The 1m-long CPODS hang about 10m (33ft) down from the sea's surface.

They record the special "clicking" sound that dolphins and porpoises make.

According to the trust, about 1,100 dolphins, porpoises and whales were washed up dead on Cornish beaches between 2005 and 2008.

About 70% of the animals were victims of bycatch - getting accidentally caught up in fishing gear.

In December, the trust published the results of a 12-month trial, where different audio devices, known as "pingers", were fitted to nets on four fishing boats based in Newlyn.

It found there was a 48% reduction in the amount of harbour porpoises near the fishing boats when the devices were fitted.

Harbour porpoises are the most common victims of bycatch in inshore waters, the trust said in its report.

But the number of dolphins counted was too low to conclude whether the "pinger" was effective in keeping them away from boats.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-12258965
(Submitted by Liz R)

Dolphin detectors installed along Cornish coastline

22 January 2011

Underwater dolphin detectors have been installed along the Cornish coastline.

The seven audio recording devices, known as CPODS (Cetacean and Porpoise Detectors), were installed by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

It hopes that by learning more about where dolphins, whales and porpoises congregate, it can reduce the number killed by fishing nets.

The CPODs are attached to offshore buoys in locations recommended by local fishermen.

An eighth CPOD is due to be floated from a site near St Agnes in the next week.

Abby Crosbie, a conservation officer with the trust, said: "It's essential that we get information from fishermen about the seabed and where to place the CPODS.

"We're protecting these species, unfortunately they are affected by accidental bycatch.

"No-one, not us nor the fishermen, want that to happen."
'Pinger' trial

The 1m-long CPODS hang about 10m (33ft) down from the sea's surface.

They record the special "clicking" sound that dolphins and porpoises make.

According to the trust, about 1,100 dolphins, porpoises and whales were washed up dead on Cornish beaches between 2005 and 2008.

About 70% of the animals were victims of bycatch - getting accidentally caught up in fishing gear.

In December, the trust published the results of a 12-month trial, where different audio devices, known as "pingers", were fitted to nets on four fishing boats based in Newlyn.

It found there was a 48% reduction in the amount of harbour porpoises near the fishing boats when the devices were fitted.

Harbour porpoises are the most common victims of bycatch in inshore waters, the trust said in its report.

But the number of dolphins counted was too low to conclude whether the "pinger" was effective in keeping them away from boats.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-12258965
(Submitted by Liz R)

Fishing nets claim third sea creature

Published: 19/01/2011 at 12:00 AM

Another dolphin has washed up dead on the Gulf of Thailand coast.

It is the third marine creature believed to have drowned in fishing nets in the past two days, officials said.

The body of the young Irrawaddy dolphin was found on a beach in front of a resort in Sam Roi Yot district of Prachuap Khiri Khan yesterday morning. The 1.2-metre-long mammal's body bore deep cuts believed to have been caused by a fishing net.

Local fishery official Chaiya Daotoon said the dolphin had probably died on Monday.

He said the bodies of two other rare sea creatures had come ashore in nearby Chumphon in the past two days.

A 2.3-metre-long hump-backed dolphin was found dead on Monday on Thung Wua Laen beach in Pathiu district of Chumphon and a dead green sea turtle with a 58-centimetre-wide shell was found on Sai Ree beach in Muang district of the same province.

Nipawan Busarawit, director of the Chumphon-based Marine and Coastal Resources Research Centre for the central Gulf of Thailand, said it was common for dead marine animals to come ashore in Chumphon and nearby provinces at this time of year. Six dead dolphins and four dead green sea turtles have washed ashore since November.

Nearly 20 dolphins and green sea turtles were found dead last year. Some were killed by fish nets and intestinal infections. Others bore no trace of damage and officials have not established the cause of their death.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/217056/fishing-nets-claim-third-sea-creature