Back to the Field!!!!!

This year thanks to very generous donors (TDRF team members, family, many good friends and supporters) and to Whole Foods Aventura, Florida, we have been able to get just enough cash together to get back to our long-term field site in Key West, Florida.

Lower Florida Keys

Here we have been studying the local population of bottlenose dolphins since 1999.

This summer we will be studying many different things. But our primary focus will be on feeding behaviors. A subset of dolphins in the area use a strategy called “mud plume feeding”. To catch fish they make U shaped plumes of mud and then lunge through the plumes. We want to know how much energy this takes compared to other feeding behaviors (speed and time of fast movement to chase fish) and how successful it is (how often do they catch fish when they do it?)

Dolphin lunges through u shaped mud plume to catch fish

To figure this out we will be attempting to use overhead video of the animals we follow!

Each day we will be posting the highlights of our work to give you an idea about what life in the field is like and so you can learn about our discoveries as they are made!