Blogs

From the Field- March 2023

Monday, March 20, 2023

The Photo-ID team had another successful survey in February! The morning was busy with two sightings, and the afternoon slowed down with no dolphins observed for the remainder of the day. The first sighting occurred in the Atlantic near Key Largo and initially consisted of 8 dolphins, who were later joined by an additional group of 4 dolphins. This was likely a maternal pod, as there were a several calves present. The dolphins were observed slowly traveling and displaying social behavior. W... Read More

From the President- March 2023

Monday, March 20, 2023

Spring has Sprung!    Hello everyone!    This month has flown by! I can’t believe it’s already time for another update, but that’s likely because so much has happened in the past few weeks.    Just after our last update, we hosted over 100 of our closest friends and donors for the Grand Opening of The Connect Center. The evening started with food stations representing cuisine from around the world, staged alongside the dolphin lagoon, as well as... Read More

From the Pod- March 2023

Monday, March 20, 2023

Alfonz –  Spring break season is in full swing and, as usual, Alfonz is stealing the hearts of hundreds of guests who have the privilege to interact with him!  Last month, we mentioned Alfonz was working on putting the finishing touches on his “Tumble” behavior. This behavior involves the dolphin performing a front flip at the surface of the water in a circle, all the way around the perimeter of the lagoon. Happily, the training team reports that Alfonz can now com... Read More

From the Scientists... Fence Fishing

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Our team of researchers recently discovered an innovative and novel behavior our population of Common bottlenose dolphins were exhibiting throughout the day. As part of our commitment to further understanding dolphin cognition and behavior (and disseminating our discoveries to the larger scientific community), our research team recently published a peer-reviewed scientific article on this fascinating behavior!     Fence Fishing: The Use of Algae by Bottlenose Dolphins to Attra... Read More

From the Pod- February 2023

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Alfonz –Alfonz, our “big man on campus”, remains the class clown of the pod and never fails to demonstrate his ability to think independently! During our guest interactions, we ask our guests to give hand signals to the dolphins. Each hand signal correlates with one of the unique and established behaviors in Alfonz’ behavior repertoire – so he knows them well. Lately, when guests give Alfonz a hand signal, he offers a “creative” behavioral response, d... Read More

From the Field- February 2023

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

It was a very successful January for the Photo-ID team. We completed 5 surveys and observed a total of ~80 dolphins in 11 separate groups. Group sizes ranged from 2 dolphins to 28 dolphins. Many of these dolphins have been previously cataloged, so we continue building on their individual sighting histories. Several new dolphins, including newborn calves were also observed as we continue adding to our catalog, now numbering more than 400 individual dolphins.Of special interest, the group of 28... Read More