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| Hours before the dolphins at Marine Life Oceanarium, Gulfport Mississippi, performed tricks for a cheering crowd of schoolchildren, they lined up in the stadium tank for blood tests. Trainers draw the blood from veins in the dolphins' tailfins. It is a swift and orderly process. The dolphins are rewarded with fish. Mark Mitchell, a researcher with Louisiana State University, sits at a small table next to the empty grandstand and distributes the blood samples into small vials. They will be taken to a laboratory for analysis. The monthly blood testing helps scientists improve the dolphins' health care. "Running bloodwork helps to figure out what is going on inside them," Mitchell said. "In human medicine, doctors wouldn't think of not testing our blood." Mitchell is particularly interested in the iron content of the dolphins' blood. Captive animals often have concentrated levels of minerals, such as iron. About three years ago, a dolphin at Marine Life died of hemochromatosis, a condition in which an excessive amount of iron is absorbed into the bloodstream. Mitchell hopes to learn what causes the high iron levels and what can be done to control it. He said the Marine Life dolphins present an unusual opportunity for research. Historically, aquariums and zoos are more concerned about housing and displaying animals than studying them, Mitchell said. "This is an opportunity to share and disseminate information to help diagnose and prevent diseases in the (dolphins)," he said. The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Marine Life, partners with several universities to study dolphins both in captivity and in the wild. Mitchell's research is among more than 20 studies being conducted by the institute and its university partners. Grant money helps Scientific research began at Marine Life in the early 1980s, when the institute was established. Moby Solangi, president of IMMS and Marine Life, said the institute has intensified its research over the last two years. It recently received $3 million from the federal government to help pay for a planned rescue and rehabilitation center for dolphins and other marine mammals in Gulfport. "In the past, it was one little thing at a time," he said of the program. "Now it's a serious, large-scale, all-encompassing attempt to study these animals." The studies cover a wide range of topics. Scientists study where dolphins live, where they travel, what they eat and how they die. They are trying to determine the effect of human activity on dolphins. The researchers also are studying mother-calf relationships, seeking to improve the diets of captive dolphins and developing new approaches to their health care. State and federal grants and private contributions pay for research. Solangi believes studying the large population of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins in the murky, shallow waters of the Mississippi Sound will provide insight into the coastal environment. He said the dolphins' position at the top of the food chain makes them a good indicator of the overall health of the Sound's ecosystem. "Problems in the environment will affect dolphins before they affect us," he said. A healthy Sound is vital to South Mississippi's economy, specifically its seafood and tourist industries, but pollution poses a grave threat to the world's oceans. Its harmful effects are apparent each year in the Gulf of Mexico when a large dead zone, an oxygen-starved area unable to sustain aquatic life, forms west of the mouth of the Mississippi River from spring to late summer. The lifeless void is growing. In 2002, it covered about 8,500 square miles, an area roughly the size of New Jersey. A primary cause of the dead zone is nutrient-rich runoff from inland farms and development. The nutrients fuel algae blooms, which suck the oxygen from the water. Solangi said the dead zone could threaten the Mississippi Sound unless action is taken to reduce pollution pouring into the oceans. In April, a federal commission released a report calling on the government to overhaulits ocean policy to prevent further destruction of the environment. Solangi said policy-makers can use information gathered from the institute's research to make informed decisions to reduce the dead zone and protect the environment. "That's the key," he said. "We need to make good decisions based on good data. It's a prudent approach." People love them Solangi said there is another factor that makes dolphins an attractive subject for study. "People love dolphins," he said. "They really appreciate them." The dolphins at Marine Life entertain crowds with displays of intelligence and athleticism. While schoolchildren marvel at their jumps and other stunts, scientists draw inspiration from how little is know about dolphins. Stan Kuczaj, director of the Marine Mammal Behavior and Cognition Laboratory at the University of Southern Mississippi, has worked with the institute studying behavior in wild and captive dolphins for about eight years. He enjoys seeing his students become excited after a discovery. Much of his research has focused on relationships between female dolphins and their calves. Kuczaj has learned that dolphin mothers, like their human counterparts, take different approaches to rearing children. "There are different mom behaviors," he said. "Some moms are protective. If a calf strays too far, she'll get angry and lift it out of the water or pin it to the bottom of the tank for a few minutes to punish it. "Some moms give their calves more freedom: 'Go have fun, but don't get hurt.' Kuczaj applies what he observes from captive dolphins to his study of dolphins in the Sound. He is trying to get a sense of their lifestyle: where they live, if they belong to groups, how they react to human presence. His team of graduate students spends at least one long day per month in a boat tracking dolphins around Ship and Cat islands. They identify the dolphins by distinctive markings on the dorsal fins. The project complements a study by LSU researchers who are tracking dolphins' habitation patterns in the Sound, the Louisiana marshland and in the Gulf of Mexico near the Chandeleur Islands. It is exhaustive and sophisticated, but the scientists believe it will provide people a more complete picture of the world. "This research not only helps us to better understand dolphins, but ourselves, too," Kuczaj said. "The more we know, the more objective data that we have, the better off we're going to be."
DOLPHIN
MOOCH OFF SNOOK BOATS Big as in 10 feet and up to 650 pounds of clicking, whistling appetite for snook. We're talking Atlantic bottlenose dolphins that are more like Freddie the Freeloader than Flipper. Several years ago, in studying snook for fisheries management, Taylor and other scientists established a figure, called the catch-and-release mortality rate, of 2.13 percent. That is, only a little more than one in every 50 snook are calculated to die due to the trauma of being caught and released alive. That's the figure used when the state does computer modeling of the snook population, in order to see how fishing regulations should be set. The problem is that those snook that survived the catch didn't survive after being released into holding pens containing hungry dolphins. These days, more and more anglers, particularly guides who specialize in snook fishing, report dolphins that are taking untoward advantage of the buffet lines behind their boats. "It all started with catch-and-release," said Boca Grande Capt. Scott Moore, who has 25 years of experience guiding for snook on the lower Gulf Coast. Moore said he has experienced snook-eating dolphin in Captiva and Redfish passes, at the old Boca Grande phosphate dock, at the Placida trestle and along the beaches. "At Bull and Turtle bays they roam
up and down the bars looking for boats," Moore said. "They're
really smart." "Their technique is to lay off the boat about 150 feet or so," Allen said. Apparently, the dolphins don't want to interfere with the snook taking the bait. "When you hook a fish they know it immediately, and swim right over to the boat. They're not like a shark, which would try to attack the hooked fish. They just move directly to the boat, where they know the fish will be in a few seconds." Allen reports not a single snook ever eludes the dolphins, which he likens to a pack of wolves. Fort Myers Capt. Steve Bailey has given up fishing at The Sticks, a well-known stretch of Sanibel beach with fallen Australian pines that attract lots of snook. Bailey said two dolphins, one of which had a battered dorsal fin, would take every snook he released, no matter what he did to prevent it. "I threw it as close to the beach as I could, and it still got him, "Bailey said of one experiment in evasive maneuvers. A tired snook is no match for a dolphin that can hit 22 mph in bursts. Would-be fish saviors are compromised by a state law that requires snook to be released in the place where caught if they are under 26 inches, or over 34, or during the closed seasons, from May through August and mid-December through January on the Gulf Coast. Otherwise, boaters might put a snook into a live well until they were safely away from the fishing hole. But even that would not be a foolproof method, because the dolphins often follow boats they know are likely to catch a lot of fish. Odessa Capt. Troy Sapp, who fishes out of Englewood during the summer, said a pod of dolphins in Lemon Bay learned to follow his boat by the signature of its engine noise. When he changed motors he suddenly was dolphin-free, for a while. "It took them two weeks to figure out who I was again, and then they were right back with me," Sapp said. In an effort to stress snook as little as possible, so they still might be able to elude dolphins after release, Sapp tried having his customers leave the snook in the water so he could take out the hooks and send them on their way without touching them. But he abandoned that ploy after one customer had a dolphin take a snook off the hook for him, while he was unhooking another caught at the same time by his other customer. Sapp said the dolphins have the potential to hurt his business. "I can't in good conscience stay on
a good snook bite, if I'm releasing fish right into the mouths of dolphins,"
he said. "Those guys," he said of a pod of dolphins that lived at the mouth of Old Tampa Bay, "would pick me up when I came around the MacDill (Air Force Base) runway and follow me all day. And it didn't matter what I did to try to scare them away," Taylor said. Scaring dolphins is an infraction of the
federal Marine Mammal Protection Act that a Coast Guard-licensed captain
could ill afford to commit, at costs of as much as $12,000 in civil penalties,
and up to $20,000 for criminal fines, plus possible jail time. But Oswell said if an angler isn't intentionally feeding a dolphin, there's no violation. "We obviously would warn the fishermen not to be in a situation where they were feeding the dolphins, but if a dolphin comes up and eats the snook, that's part of nature." Randy Wells, director of the Center for Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, said the dolphins' reported behavior with snook must be a function of the mammals' intellect and opportunistic abilities, because snook are not a normal prey item. Their primary diet in Sarasota Bay studies has been pinfish, pigfish, spot and mulle, all species the dolphins can swallow whole. Their teeth are designed for catching and holding, but not cutting, Wells said. In Charlotte Harbor, however, dolphins definitely have learned to swallow snook, to the point of self-endangerment. In 1993 Lee County Marine Extension Service agent Bob Wasno, then with the Lee County Department of Natural Resources, performed a necropsy on one large male dolphin that officially suffered "death by gluttony." The dolphin apparently strangled to death on the last of three snook, each from 28 to 30 inches long, plus a ladyfish and what Wasno said was about two dozen herrings and small seatrout. Bahamas Wild Dolphin Vacations
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