A lot of our work this summer involves focal follows. This is when researchers find animals of particular interest (DB animals, in our case), and follow them for an extended period of time to watch their behavior. A lot of people assume dolphin research is always fun and we do love our work, but it can also be extremely boring at times! We have done several focal follows this season on driver dolphins for over 4 hours each without a single DB bout! If they’re only in the mood to rest or travel the entire day, that’s all we get to see. Since so few individuals do DB in the first place, this makes seeing the behavior very rare. If we could have multiple eyes on the area at one time, we would be sure to find DB in progress more often… so we’d like to recruit your help! If you specifically see DB (dolphins catching mullet in air; see photos below) from land or on the water around Cedar Key/Waccasassa Bay/Withlacoochee Bay between now and August 20th, please send us a message on Facebook or email us at [email protected] to let us know when and where you saw it. A couple pictures or a short video could also be really helpful. This is your chance to participate in citizen science and help us achieve our research goals this summer!
-Becca
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