Bottlenose dolphins: we seem to know them so well. They're the most common species of
dolphin in the world. Because of the
species' ubiquity, the bottlenose dolphin
is one of the most intensively studied
species of dolphin and one thing that
researchers have learned is that there's
more to the bottlenose dolphin
than meets the eye.
The Eckerd College Dolphin Project was
started in 1993 by the late Dr. John
Reynolds is now headed by Dr. Shannon
Gowans and Dr. Peter Simard. It's the
longest running undergraduate-based
dolphin research project in the world,
celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2018.
The Eckerd College Dolphin Project is
unusual in that it focuses entirely on
undergraduate research unlike many other
programs which involve graduate students as well; so while students are supervised
by us, our undergraduate students are
fully involved in all aspects of the
research from coming out collecting the
data on their own to analyzing the data
in the lab as well. Many of these
students complete undergraduate theses,
independent projects or attend
scientific conferences and publish
papers and journals; achievements that
are normally reserved for masters and
doctoral students. Some use their dolphin
project experience to launch careers in
marine science. One of the things that
was really awesome about my time with
the Eckerd College Dolphin Project is it
allowed me to have the opportunity
to experience the field surveys and apply
them to science and and it was also then
that I realized that I wanted to be a marine mammal conservationist and that you
need to take that science and apply it
to how to protect dolphins in the wild so it
really gave me that foundation for
understanding what goes into the field work, translating into the science
and then feeding into the needed conservation and management. Feld work
is conducted on small boats in Tampa Bay
in the nearby Gulf of Mexico. Visual
surveys are used to determine the
locations where dolphins are found and
where they're not. Once a group of
dolphins is found several types of data
are recorded throughout the encounter:
information on group size, presence of
calves and behaviors
collected and photographs are taken of
the dolphins' dorsal fins. In addition a
hydrophone--an underwater microphone--is used to record the sounds the dolphins
make. However one type of data collection the dolphin project performs actually
doesn't involve observing the dolphins
at all. The dolphin project has several
autonomous bottom mounted acoustic
recorders deployed in the study area.
These devices record sounds on a 10
second every 10 minute duty cycle 24
hours a day. As much as all members of
the dolphin project enjoy the field the
real work begins back at the lab. So
after a day in the field we will bring
all of our pictures that we took out on
the boat back into the lab to go through
them and ID our dolphins that we saw. So
to begin we'll go through each and every
picture we took that day as you can see
and then we will give them a temporary
ID and crop them and rate their quality
right before we put them into DARWIN
which is our software program that will
identify the dolphin for us. The software
was originally implemented by Mark Allen
who was a double major in computer
science and marine science; he worked
under the direction of John Stewman, a
computer science faculty member at that
time who envisioned the project from the
start, who had the idea to use image
processing techniques and computer
vision to solve this laborious process
of identifying dolphins by photos of
their dorsal fins. Through photo ID
analysis ECDP researchers have learned
that while some dolphins are only seen
occasionally in the area others appear
spend their entire lives here. The
acoustic recordings yield valuable
information on bottlenose dolphins; many
of the sounds that dolphins make are
ultrasonic meaning the frequency or
pitch of the sound is too high for us to
hear therefore much of the analysis of
these files involves looking at the
sounds on a computer. Whistles are a
common sound the dolphins use for
communication and they're really good at
modifying how they sound to each other.
In this area around Eckerd, the
researchers found dolphins will increase
the frequency or the pitch of their
whistles when there's competing
background noise; it appears they
increase whistle frequencies to be heard
over the lower frequency boat noise.
There seems to be no end to the
questions that we can ask using the
acoustic data. Since its beginning in
1993 dozens of students studying biology, marine science, psychology and other
disciplines have gone on to graduate
programs, jobs in conservation, management, research and academia around the world.
And Eckerd College dolphin project researchers will continue to conduct research important to the
understanding and conservation of bottlenose dolphins and their environment and
train the scientists, conservationists
and policymakers of tomorrow.
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