Eavesdropping to Find our Lost Dolphins Hi Everyone.  I am the Research Director of the Wild Dolphin Project. We have been tracking the same resident community of dolphins for over 34 years.  In 2013, 50 % of our resident dolphins went missing (after living there for decades).  In 2018 we deployed some eavesdropping devices, in one of our most remote areas, to record dolphin sounds for a two-month period.  It's critical to monitor individual dolphins every year to track their health and reproductive status. Monitoring and recording their vocal activity 24 hrs/day was a huge success and we were able to find a few missing dolphins from our long-term community.  Of the missing dolphins we found Brush who was now pregnant, and by her side was her two-year-old calf Butter, who we had not seen since he was a newborn.   We've been following Brush's family line since the 1990's and only recently lost her mom Paint (Grandma to Butter). Brush and Butter were escorted by a small group of males that had returned a few years ago to this remote site.  So we were thrilled to confirm that Brush's line continues and her calf is healthy! And we were impressed that the data helped us find them again, demonstrating the power of this technology.   In the summer of 2019 we would like to expand this project to include three listening devices in hopes of finding other still-missing dolphins in this community. To deploy one device for 2.5 months and analyze the data costs a little over $6500.  So we are aiming to deploy three listening EARS in the summer of 2019.  Here's a couple blogs from the summer of 2018 with more details about our eavesdropping work.    <a href="http://www.wilddolphinproject.org/can-hear-now/">Can you hear me now?</a>     <a href="http://www.wilddolphinproject.org/2018-field-season-trip-3/">Trip 3, 2018 E.A.R. Blog, </a><a href="http://www.wilddolphinproject.org/2018-field-season-trip-8-ear-update/">Trip 8, 2018 . E.A.R. update</a>  Please help us find our missing dolphins on Little Bahama Bank.  More information about Wild Dolphin Project: The Wild Dolphin Project is a non-profit scientific research organization that studies and reports on a specific pod of free ranging Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis). Founded in 1985, objectives of this long-term, non-invasive field research on wild dolphins are to gather information on the natural history of these dolphins, including dolphin behaviors, social structure, dolphin communication, and habitat; and to report our findings to the scientific community and the general public.

Axel Stepan

Anonymous

Denise's campaign for Wild Dolphin Project

Still $18,190 to go. Help us build momentum.