VOLUME 14 ISSUE 1 2010 u UNDERCOVER DOLPHIN LOVER . 2 u ADOPT-A-DOLPHINS ON FACEBOOK . 4 The Dolphin u DCP viSITS Japan For A conFerence . 7 gazette NEWSLETTER FOR THE DOLPHIN COMMUNICATION PROJECT The Dolphin Communication Project (DCP) is focused on the dual goals of scientific research and education. WOW! The second decade of this millennium! We just completed our 8th field season Dolphin fundraiser - check them out! at RIMS and will soon commence Our research season at RIMS was our 10th season around Bimini. Time a success and we included a new is simply flying by! Luckily we are student and a new class this January. learning more with each season As usual, the Gazette is filled with and year as we continue to study new information and updates on our dolphin communication, behavior research and programs. I hope you and acoustics at each of our field enjoy reading this issue as much as we sites. This issue of the Gazette focuses have enjoyed writing it to share with mostly on Bimini - the studies, the you. people and, of course, the dolphins. Kathleen Kelly continues to oversee DCP’s In this issue Bimini Field Program working with U n d e r c o v e r D o l p h i n both Bimini Undersea and Sea Crest L o v e r | D o l p h i n s o n groups. Two dolphins are available F a c e b o o k | B i m i n i Photo by Al Sweeting for naming through our Name-A- E c o t o u r 2 0 1 0 | R I M S update|Internships|Dolphin www.biminiadventures.com m a t c h i n g The DolphinGazette is printed on 100% recycled paper! Mailing Address Thank you to DCP Internships Volunteers!! Dolphin Communication Project If you are interested in interning with P.O. Box 711 DCP would like to thank Binti Ackley and DCP during a fall or summer semester, Old Mystic, CT 06372-0711 Marliese Friedman for all their help this more information is available on our USA winter. Without your effort and assistance, website. Please note, most internships are DCP’s office could not run so smoothly. office-based and do NOT include field You do a great job processing data and work. Check out the web site or contact helping to keep things organized. Well us at [email protected]. done! Undercover Dolphin Lover by Shannon Keefe. ello there. My name is Shannon Keefe and I’m 17 years Hold. We live on a tiny island in the Bahamas called Bimini and my parents, Bill & Nowdla Keefe own a dive shop here called Bimini Undersea (www.biminiundersea. com). We’ve been living here my whole life, and our obsessive hobby of swimming and snorkeling took a major turn when mom decided to swim with the dolphins that live off shore. Freckles… One dolphin in particular is my favorite, even today. She was very The Sighting… old back then, and the older they get the more spots they have. I One day when my mom and I were on the boat, we noticed called her Freckles because she had so many. She always had that dolphins swimming by. At first we thought it was a one old wise woman vibe about her; like she was your grandma. I used time thing; that they just happened to swim by because the to say she and her friends were talking to me because they whistled Gulf Stream is very close to Bimini’s shoreline and we get a and chirped. We found out later that when they do a special kind of bunch of cool one-time sightings. Though, we began to get whistle underwater, it’s called their signature whistle. This means curious when we kept seeing them. I don’t know about you, that this whistle is different for each dolphin, and it’s like they’re but seeing something pretty cool more than once doesn’t fall telling you their name. I was all over that! I even tried to say under the “cool one-time sighting” category in my book, “Shannon” to them, but I didn’t know the translation from English even at 3 years old. to Bubble that well… I made due though. I haven’t seen Freckles in a while; I’m guessing it’s because she’s really old and can’t be as active and playful as she used to be. I like to think that she checks up The Search… on us with her echolocation when we go out, and can hear us. Maybe If you hear good gossip from someone, you go to find out she talks to the other dolphins and asks how we’re doing… if it’s true, right? Same thing applies here, we had a hunch that we just had to find out if it was true; are the dolphins here regularly? The next question The Experience… was ‘do they like people’? So in our free time People always ask me “How has this experience we took our boat and just patrolled the shore of changed you?” or “How do you think your life is Bimini to get to the bottom of it all. After a while different because of the dolphins?” My first reactive we found that they were actually there a lot of response is to say my life hasn’t changed; I’m no the time, and it came to be known that they live different because I swim with them… But thinking off shore year round! This won mom the title of about the question longer, I realize I honestly don’t The Dolphin Lady and won me… nothing. No know. I was so young when this happened, that I don’t acknowledgement whatsoever. *sigh* The life I remember life without them there. They have always lead… been apart of my upbringing. I haven’t gone a summer without swimming with them at least 20 times; I Making Friends… haven’t gone a day without thinking about them. They After that, we were obsessed! We went all the are as much apart of my life and my childhood as my time and it seemed like there were two different kinds: the parents, friends, and family. In all actuality, I have been swimming ones with and the ones without freckle-like spots. We now with dolphins for 14 years and my sister is only 12. I’ve known them know, thanks to DCP and other dolphin gurus, that they’re longer than I’ve known my sister! I honestly have no idea how life different and they’re called Atlantic spotted dolphins and would be if I didn’t have them around… Thank you dolphins, and bottlenose dolphins. To me, the bottlenose looked the same, thank you DCP for sending us Kelly to help us learn and find out but the spotteds, or freckled ones as I liked to say, were more about these creatures. For that, I am truly grateful. different. After going out a lot, it seemed like they knew us and our boat (because each boat sounds different) and we were getting to know each of them! Their spots have different patterns, it was so awesome recognizing them and having them recognizing us! 2 Shannon RIMS 2010 DCP’s first Animal Behavior College Class and an Eco-tour January 2010 launched our 8th (!) season studying the dolphins who call Bailey’s Key home. We were greeted by 24 bottlenose dolphins (and several humans) during our week eco-tour during the third week of January. Bailey’s Key is the smaller island just to the west of Anthony’s Key and is part of the Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences (RIMS) at Anthony’s Key Resort (AKR). AKR has been in operation since 1968 and RIMS was founded by the Galindo family in 1989. This was the first trip I had made in January, completing my season-complement for visits to Roatan. January is part of the rainy season, and I was surprised by how lush the forest was, how green everything was and how tropical the climate felt not just in temperature but visually as well. The eco-tour was actually the second half of arrived that afternoon. The eco-tour was a bit different my visit to AKR; the first ten days encompassed the from our previous sessions in that we had one eco- tourist first college course on animal behavior that DCP has and one student. Penn has spent much time working with offered. other dolphin science projects from Hawaii to Florida and currently volunteers with The Dolphin Project out of Georgia. We had four students representing He and Wu-Jung conducted the surface three universities. This team (Amber, observations, participated in two swims with Amanda, Kristin and Sarah) experienced the dolphins and then Penn and I assisted the coldest temps I have ever felt on Wu-Jung in her data collection. You can find Roatan - we even saw our breath one Wu-Jung’s summary on page 7 of this issue morning. But the underwater visibility of the Gazette. was fantastic and we collected 4 hours of data in total with the MVA. The She is a doctoral student in the MIT/WHOI students attended lectures on various joint program and is focusing on dolphin topics related to animal behavior and echolocation use during foraging. Because also conducted their own observations as the dolphins at RIMS have not yet been well as assisting me with the collection habituated to wearing the DTag - a recording of DCP’s continued baseline of data on device that captures the outgoing dolphin this group of dolphins.