Dede spotted this awesome video of a unique dolphin hunting technique that was recently showcased in the BBC "Life" series.   Aerial photography reveals how some ingenious bottlenose dolphins off of the Florida coast use their powerful tail flukes to create a ring of mud to trap fish in shallow waters.   The panicked fish jump out of the water away from the ring, right into the waiting mouths of the other dolphins in the hunting pod.   Interestingly, only one female in the pod creates these rings — always counter-clockwise — and she does it over & over until the whole pod is fed.


Kinda reminds me of another article about dolphins in southern Brazil hunting fish cooperatively with humans.   Now if we could just get people to work together as well as the dolphins do, how great would that be?
 

Labels: dolphins

"You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t."

There never ceases to be good examples of just how true Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote is.

Via Jason Kottke’s blog, I discovered marine biology grad student Dave Shiffman’s interesting debate The Ecological Disaster That Is Dolphin-Safe Tuna that sheds some unique perspectives on the concept of "dolphin-safe" tuna, its effects on sustainable commercial tuna fishing, and the impacts of bycatch.

The gist of the article is that we’ve blindly allowed activists to recklessly prioritize the well-being of one group of aquatic animals at the expense of many others.   This is largely because it’s easier for our collective conscience to identify with smart, friendly dolphins than other species that aren’t as easily empathized with because they seem less cute or intelligent.   As a result, government-mandated dolphin-safe fishing practices have unintentionally had devastating effects for a much broader range of oceanic creatures.

For every 1 dolphin saved, 382 Mahi-Mahi, 188 Wahoo, 82 Yellowtail & other large fish, 27 sharks, nearly 1,200 smaller fish, and a number of sea turtles and various other sea-life.

(To make matters worse, dolphin-safe fishing methods result in far more young tuna being caught rather than the more mature tuna who have already been reproducing, thereby making food supplies even more scarce for the very dolphins we’re striving to save.)

So the thorny ethical dilemma is whether it’s worth saving dolphins at the expense of sea turtles, sharks, and many other endangered fish species.   Should we protect dolphins — who we have reason to believe are sentient mammals with intelligence that rivals our own — even if it means fishing some other sea-life right into extinction?
 

Labels: dolphins, environment

We just returned from our first official family vacation.   We spent a week of sun-drenched, fun-filled days in San Diego, CA!

Liam did great on the plane ride and loved the water activities. We went to Sea World and the San Diego Zoo.   The dolphins & Shamu were a hit but the land animals at the Zoo were not as entertaining for him.   His favorite thing to do was just to splash around at the pool or any body of water.   He fearlessly charged into the ocean waves — the very chilly Pacific water didn’t intimidate him the least bit.


My friend Karen (a.k.a. Nanny Karen) from Kansas City met up with us in San Diego.   She’d never been there before and it was great to experience S.D. through new eyes.   Also, my friend Gretchen and her daughter who live in California drove down for the day to visit with us.   Liam loved having a new friend to hang out with at the beach.

The trip was also bittersweet for me as I scattered the ashes of my Uncle Whit there who passed away last December.   I had spent many summers out there with him in my high school / college years.   He had moved to Texas 13 years ago but his heart was always at his beach house so I wanted part of him to be back there.

Rob & I used to go out to San Diego once or twice a year (in fact, you can still view photos of our 2005 San Diego - Bakersfield trip on Kodak Gallery) and I’ve gotta say that this trip was quite different!   For those of you who have not vacationed with your new children, be prepared...   things go much slower and you run out of energy much faster!  

I overloaded our itinerary, forgetting that I needed to cater it to the attention-span and dawdling pace of a 3 year old doesn’t move at the same pace we do.   A few travel tips too: take lots of new things to entertain your child in the hotel room (thanks, Nanny Karen!) and be prepared for your child to be very cranky & moody at times since he/she will be way off of the normal routine.   (Being cooped up in a small hotel room where there’s little to do sure doesn’t help.)   Don’t get me wrong - we had a great time and San Diego was wonderful as always.   But vacationing with a toddler was a very different experience and everything happened at a far different pace than I would’ve imagined.
 

Labels: dolphins, travel

The fictional Dr. Dolittle may soon have some real competition, as we inch enticingly closer to being able to communicate with animals.

In an important breakthrough in deciphering dolphin language, researchers Jack Kassewitz & John Stuart Reid, associated with the Speak Dolphin project, have developed a means to visualize the high definition sonic imprints that dolphin sounds make in water.   The resulting CymaGlyphs, as the images have been named, are reproducible patterns that the scientists believe will form the basis of a dictionary, with each pattern being a visual representation of a word within the dolphin vocabulary.

Underwater sound travels not in waves, but rather in expanding bubbles and beams.   At the 20—20,000 Hertz frequency range audible to humans, the sound-bubble form dominates;   above 20,000 Hertz the shape of sound becomes more of a cone-shaped beam.   CymaGlyphs are created by intersecting these sound beams with a membrane that the vibrations make an imprint upon, revealing an intricate architectures within the sound.   These fine details can then be captured on camera.


The research team has planned a series of experiments to record the sounds of dolphins targeting a range of objects to verify that the same sound is always repeated for the same object.   Ultimately, it’s believed that this will allow them to compile a dolphin dictionary.

So given the chance, what would you chat about with Flipper?
 

Labels: dolphins, technology

Thanks to our old pal Trey, we received a link to a Telegraph news article with some amazing photographs.   The unique moment of a Bottlenose dolphin giving birth was captured by photographer Leandro Stanzani at the Oltremare Aquarium in Eastern Italy.

Very few dolphin births have been successfully photographed in such astonishing detail because they usually occur at night, away from the viewing windows, and often the water clarity is poor.   But what makes this birth even more special is that this is the first second-generation dolphin born in captivity at Oltremare.   The mother, Blue, was also born at the aquarium in 1997.

Labels: dolphins

By way of a link featured in Deb Shinder’s WXPNews, here’s an amazing video of bottlenose dolphins at Sea World Orlando creating & skillfully manipulating delicate vortexes of air (a.k.a. "bubble rings") underwater:


Be sure to read Mystery of the Silver Rings by Don White, creator of Earthtrust’s Project Delphis, to learn much more about these incredible bubble rings.
 

Labels: dolphins

Longtime readers may recall my older article Speed Is Skin Deep, Too in which I mentioned "Gray’s Paradox," a theory published in 1936 that contended that dolphins were physiologically incapable of producing sufficient power to achieve the speeds mariners had observed.   Researchers have long since disproved this, discovering key flaws in Gray’s calculations.   Then a couple of years ago, Japanese scientists discovered that the way in which water flows over the dolphin’s rubbery & continually shedding skin significantly reduces the vortices that would otherwise create too strong a drag on the tail.

But now, as reported in the March 2008 New Scientist article "Dolphins swim so fast it hurts," findings from a pair of researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have discovered that the main limiting factor of a dolphin’s maximum speed is neither physical ability nor friction-causing turbulence.   What’s holding dolphins back from even more impressive speeds?

Pain.

As dolphins propel themselves through the water, there’s a continual formation of microscopic bubbles around the tail, a phenomenon known as "cavitation."   These bubbles form as a result of the pressure difference created by the movement of the tail fins or flukes.   As the bubbles collapse, they produce a shockwave.   This same condition produces the foamy wash that streams behind boats & ships and is known to deteriorate the metal on propellers.

The Israeli scientists revealed that, to dolphins and other fast-moving aquatic mammals, cavitation is painful since they have nerve endings in their flukes.   According to their calculations, this begins to happen when dolphins swim at speeds greater than 22 miles per hour.   So shorter bursts are tolerable, but to sustain that speed becomes too painful for the animal to endure.

Dolphins can cheat around this problem by swimming deeper in the water rather than at the surface because cavitation decreases as pressure increases.   With measurements being so much more difficult in deeper waters, the theoretical top speed of dolphins is once again anybody’s guess.
 

Labels: dolphins

When couples go out on a date, guys usually give their girl a gift — y’know, a bouquet of flowers, some candy, or jewelry — something to let her know that she’s worth the extra special effort.   It’s a traditional tactic that rarely fails to impress.

Researchers have learned that things are much the same in the dolphin world too!

According to some recent articles on Environmental Graffiti and Tursiops.com, Drs. Tony Martin & Vera da Silva’s 3-year study of 6,026 groups, or pods, of dolphins in the Brazilian Amazon revealed that dolphin males often present their dates with gifts (seaweed, twigs, or other found objects) to better their chances of mating.

What’s more, DNA tests on adults & calves provided evidence that the dolphin males who most often carried objects to their mates were the most successful fathers.   So, it seems that gift-giving is a winning tactic among our cetacean pals, too!

Like the recent discovery that dolphins learn to use tools, object presentation to a mate is considered yet another sign of culture, or complex non-instinctual socially-acquired skills which are learned from others.
 

Labels: dolphins

Hayden Panettiere a.k.a. "Claire" from one of our favorite TV series Heroes, was on Ellen this past week.   She talked about her recent trip to Taiji Japan to help stop the largest & cruelest slaughter of dolphins in the world.

According to the Save the Whales Again website — an initiative led by Pierce Brosnan and his wife, Keely Shaye Smith — Japanese fishermen will slaughter more than 25,000 dolphins & porpoises from October to April, as part of their annual hunt.   Hayden & other celebrities paddled out on surfboards to the Taiji dolphin-killing cove to try to form a memorial circle around the dolphins trapped in the nets.   Unfortunately, the celebrities were forced away by angry fisherman jabbing at them with hooks — and the dolphin killing continued.

Dolphins & whales targeted in this annual hunt include bottlenose dolphins, pilot whales & striped dolphins.   Several of the species are considered to be threatened with extinction.   Although some of the dolphins are simply captured for sale to marine swim parks, the majority of the dolphins & whales are killed for their meat.   Some of the dolphin meat has in Japan markets has been found to contain high levels of mercury & toxic pollutants.

But there’s still a little glimmer of hope...   International outrage over the hunt is beginning to intensify pressure to cease this brutal massacre.   You can help to encourage the Japanese government to put a stop to the senseless slaughter and ban the sell of dolphin meat by submitting a letter to their emabassy via the Oceana Action Center.   Or you can make an online contribution to the environmental activist organizations listed at the Save Taiji Dolphins Campaign site.   Your support will help keep conservationists in place in Taiji to monitor, witness, investigate, educate, & continue to push for the dolphin slaughter to end.
 

Labels: dolphins

Twice in recent weeks I’ve received emails  (thanks Karen W. & Stephen!)  tipping me off about news of a recent rare find — a pink bottlenose dolphin.   Sure, I’ve written before about the Indo-pacific Humpback dolphins in Hong Kong and there are the Amazon fresh-water river dolphins in South America, but this pink dolphin is much closer to home...

This pink bottlenose dolphin was photographed by Capt. Erik Rue during a fishing charter boat trip on Calcasieu Lake, an estuary just north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern Louisiana.

This marks only the 3rd reported sighting of an albino bottlenose dolphin in the Gulf of Mexico and is the most recent of a mere 14 recorded sightings in the entire world, with the earliest in 1962.

Where the common bottlenose dolphin is grey, this very rare albino calf has a bright bubblegum-pink coloration.   Albinism, a genetic disorder known to affect mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, & amphibians, is a condition that prevents the body from making the usual amounts of the melanin pigment.   This causes affected animals to have pink-hued skin and reddish eyes due to the underlying blood vessels showing through.
 

Labels: dolphins

She swims, eats, & plays almost like like any toddler her age.

Only difference is that Winter is a dolphin — without a tail...   for now.



Several months ago, I wrote about a remarkable breakthrough for a dolphin in Japan named Fuji who had been fitted with the world’s first prosthetic flukes.   But last month, an even more noteworthy & ambitious project involving an artificial limb and a dolphin is underway.   Winter, an 18-month old female Atlantic bottlenose dolphin calf in Florida’s Clearwater Marine Aquarium will be the first dolphin in the world to be fitted with a full prosthetic tail.

Though similar to the case of Fuji, Winter lost not only her flukes but also the peduncle (a vital wrist-like joint that allows a dolphin’s tail to move up & down) after getting caught in the buoy line of a crab trap near Cape Canaveral when she was only 3 months old.   Despite her severe wounds, she had begun learning to swim and play without her tail.   But after she was was rescued and transported to the facility, veterinarians became concerned that her spine might also suffer damage in the long run if other options weren’t pursued.   One of the world’s leading prosthetists, Kevin Carroll, who travels the country tackling the toughest human amputation cases, was consulted to help craft a solution.   But Carroll, of Hanger Orthopedic Group, Inc., hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of the challenge of designing a prosthetic for a dolphin:

I came straight down, saw Winter (and) felt really sorry for her.   And I came in and I said, ‘OK, we’ll fit her little tail. Not a big deal.’   Little did I know it was going to take a year and a half to do.   With a person, when we fit a socket on them, we have one long, solid bone.   We don’t have to have the socket moving in every direction.   With a dolphin, it needs to move along with her full spine.

Carroll is developing a prosthetic tail system for Winter that includes a gel sleeve that attaches via suction so that it won’t irritate her sensitive skin.   Although there are many months of work & training to go and it remains to be seen how successful the prosthetic will be over the long-term, those involved are very optimistic as she’s acclimating to the first pieces of the artificial limb quickly.   And the lessons learned with the high-tech artificial dolphin tail are paying off in advances in the prosthetics field for people too — already, at least one wounded serviceman back from Iraq has benefited from Carroll’s research for Winter’s project!

Follow this link to read USA Today’s coverage about Winter and her prosthetic tail.   And be sure to check out Winter the Dolphin’s video sponsored by a new Florida fashion portal website LivFashion.
 

Labels: dolphins

The volume of new cetacean communications discoveries seems to be increasing by leaps & bounds.   In recent months scientists have learned that, just like humans, dolphins have individual names that they use when talking with each other.   And similarly, they’ve determined that dolphins listen in on each other’s conversations and dolphins even gossip about one another.

Now, research on about 120 bottlenose dolphins in the River Shannon near Carrigaholt, County Clare in Ireland conducted by Simon Berrow and other marine biologists at the Shannon Dolphin and Wildlife Foundation has established that groups of dolphins have distinctive vocalizations pertaining to their location, or what amounts to unique regional dialectic accents.

Right, similar to the charming Irish brogue that you hear mimiced around every St. Patrick’s Day, scientists have discovered that Irish dolphins have a different accent than that of those found in other waters.

Ah, ’tis grand, indeed.   Faith and begora, what’s next?

Labels: dolphins

It’s been awhile since my last dolphin trivia blog entry, so I was getting all geared up to start off the month with a new batch of assorted dolphin facts.   But as I was culling through some notes I’ve been squirreling away over the past few weeks, a singular topic kinda emerged from the random bits and it just drew me in...

How Do Dolphins Stay Underwater So Long?

Dolphins are, of course, not fish - they have to surface in order to breath just like we do.   But where a dolphin’s lungs are comparable in size to those of other mammals, their respiratory system is anatomically unique.   Their lungs contain a lot more alveoli (air cells) and are comprised of two layers of capillaries instead of one.   Also, the membrane around the lungs & inner chest walls of dolphins is thick & elastic.   These anatomical differences provide for a dramatically more efficient exchange of gas — with each breath, a dolphin renews 80-90% of its lung capacity, whereas in humans, this number is normally 20% or less.

Given that dolphins can dive for as much as 15 minutes at a time and at depths of as much as 200m (about 600 feet), they have to make each breath last much longer than we can.   But even with hyper-efficient lungs, dolphins can’t take in enough oxygen to sustain long periods underwater.   Yet we know that they don’t run out of air and drown, so, how do they do it?

When diving, dolphins employ a kind of selective circulation where bloodflow to the skin, digestive system, some organs, & extremities slows (or even ceases), leaving only the heart, brain, & tail muscles working.   And due to the atmospheric pressure exerted on the dolphin during a deep dive, its lungs & rib cage collapse at around 100m down.

This collapse forces air out of the lungs into nasal passages & air sacs and squeezes even more blood out of its heart.   This kind of abrupt surge of blood rushing through a human’s cartoid artery would likely burst all the blood vessels in the brain and result in instant death.   But in dolphins, the blood from the aorta is forced into a sponge-like mesh of capillaries that slows the blood and reduces the pressure before it reaches the brain (imagine a sponge over the end of your garden hose for an idea of how this works).

Dolphins don’t suffer "bends" or other decompression sickness that human divers do even though they dive deeper and more frequent.   In fact, they suffer no ill effects of breathing immediately after diving a considerable depth.   Primarily, this is because, while humans breathe highly compressed air as they descend, dolphins hold their breath during dives.

Credit Where It’s Due
Bits & pieces of this info were gleaned from an array of websites but I really hit the jackpot with two sites in particular:   Michael Harwood’s The Amazing Bodies of Dolphins essay and The [Dolphin] Respiratory System chapter from the Thinkquest Team’s "Dolphins: The Oracles of the Sea".   Check these sites out for more interesting info!
 

Labels: dolphins

Not content to just be busybodies of the ocean or scandalous seafaring rumormongers, now dolphins in south Florida are getting a phone line so they can be all the more chatty!

Okay, actually a marine mammal rehabilitation facility near Key Largo opened a dolphin "chat line" of sorts on Saturday, April 7th, hoping to teach a deaf dolphin’s unborn calf to communicate.

A twice-stranded pregnant Atlantic bottlenose dolphin named Castaway has been recovering at the Marine Mammal Conservancy since Jan. 30th.   Not long after she was nursed back to health, marine biologists began to suspect that Castaway was deaf.   Testing performed in February by the National Marine Fisheries Service confirmed that Castaway doesn’t respond to auditory stimuli and is considered to be essentially deaf.   Dolphins rely upon their sense of hearing for echolocation — the means by which they hunt, socialize, navigate, and defend themselves against predators.   MMC specialists doubt that Castaway could’ve continued to survive in the wild without this most elemental skill.

So the attention now turns to Castaway’s unborn calf who, given it’s response to ultrasound testing, is believed to have normal hearing abilities.   So the conservancy’s staff decided to electronically connect Castaway’s habitat to that of a lagoon at Dolphins Plus, a marine research & educational facility a few miles down the Florida Keys Overseas Highway.   Underwater speakers & microphones were installed at both locations and connected via phone lines.

MMC’s president Robert Lingenfelser hopes that this will give Castaway’s calf, due in early May, an opportunity to get acclimated to normal dolphin vocalization sounds and learn how to communicate. You can visit the Marine Mammal Conservancy’s Castaway page to follow the story as it unfolds.

You’ve just gotta love Vann Hall’s tagline on this phone chat newsbit:

         "We’re wet, naked, and waiting for your call!"
 

Labels: dolphins

Fuji, a 37 year old dolphin at Okinawa’s Churaumi Aquarium in Japan, developed a rare disease in 2002.   After nearly 2 months of antibiotics & transfusion, she underwent surgery to remove the diseased parts last Fall.   She completely recovered from the disease, although she lost 75% of her tail flukes.

But don’t fret, things are looking up for Fuji.   She’s been fitted with the world’s first prosthetic fin, courtesy of Bridgestone. Yup, Japan’s largest tire maker developed the $83,000 prosthetic tail flukes applying the same materials used for Formula One race car tires.


Click here to watch a video of Fuji in action with her new artificial flipper.
 

Labels: dolphins

Ever wish you could perform splashy jumps & flips like a dolphin? Well, with Hybrid Arcade’s simple but fun little Flash-based online game called Dolphin Olympics, that I dicovered while rummaging around on Things That... Make You Go Hmm, you can do just that.
 

Labels: dolphins, games

Kicking off the new year in a grand fashion, the United Nations has officially declared 2007 to be the Year of the Dolphin. The campaign, officially launched by its patron H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco, hopes to help raise worldwide awareness about the plight of the marine mammal and bring them back from the brink of extinction.

Labels: dolphins

After yesterday's depressing post about the Chinese Yangtze River dolphin going extinct, I thought it'd be nice to wrap up the year on an "up" note.   So, in continuation of my previous installation of dolphin trivia, here's Part II:

• Dolphins are bald — their skin contains no hair follicles, sebaceous or sweat glands. &nsbp; Their skin is 10-20 times thicker than human skin and is lined with hydrodynamic ridges that allow fast dynamic swimming.

• Dolphins can sunburn easily and will often take advantage of shade to protect themselves.

• Dolphins move their eyes independently (similar to a gecko lizard) which allows them to see from different angles at the same time when hunting or watching for predators.

• Dolphins have a "chambered" stomach.   The forestomach does the mechanical breakdown of whole food.   Their conical teeth are only used to grasp (not chew) food.

• Since they lack an olfactory nerve, dolphins have no sense of smell.   They do have a sense of taste, however, and often show personal preferences for certain kinds of fish.

• Dolphins don't have vocal cords.   Instead, they use the muscles inside the blowhole produce squeaks, clicks, moans, warbles & other communicative sounds.

• Dolphin mothers often whistle continuously for several days after giving birth.   Initially, the mother's whistle is uniform, but then it acquires a "signature" characteristic.   Scientists believe this is how she teaches her offspring its name.

Labels: dolphins

Following 6 weeks of scouring a 3,400-kilometer segment of the Chinese Yangtze River, an expedition of 30 international researchers led by Swiss naturalist August Pfluger has declared that the Baiji, a rare white freshwater dolphin is effectively extinct.

Although there were several thousands of these dolphins fifty years ago, a 2004 report from a conservation workshop concluded that the number of Baiji in the river had declined rapidly since the 1970s. Whereas fewer than 400 of the dolphins were reported in the mid-80s, a follow-up survey in 1997 recorded only 13.

Illegal overfishing and pollution from busy ship traffic are also considered culprits, but the construction of large dams is credited as the greatest contributor to the Baiji dolphin extinction and an ongoing threat to other marine life in the Yangtze river basin.

Scientists believe this to be the first instance of a cetacean species being pushed to extinction due entirely to human action. Wonder how many more species we'll extinguish before wising up...

Labels: dolphins

Oh, they saw us coming...   They drew us right in with their always-chipper smiles, perky chatter, and eternally-friendly dispositions.   We’ve been lulled into thinking of dolphins as our joyful & genial cousins in the sea.   But those sly devils had us fooled all along.   You see, dolphins are simply not to be trusted because, well... they gossip!

Not too long ago, I posted a blog entry about a group of Scottish researchers who had proved that dolphins have names.   Well, according to Bruno Maddox’s wry commentary in a recent Discover magazine article, the Scots have since gone on to show:

[Dolphins] gossip.   We know this because we know their names.   Each bottlenose individual identifies itself by a unique pattern of whistles and clicks.   What was not known until the Scottish research, however, is that a pair of dolphins use the name of a third dolphin when that third dolphin isn’t present.   In other words, dolphins gossip.

So, it’s not bad enough that our aquatic cousins are busybodies, but they’re rumormongers, too.   And just when we were starting to think they might truly be the superior species...
 

Labels: dolphins