Sea Lab Sidebar: Dolphins

Transcript

Welcome to the Sea Lab Sidebar. Your quick dive into the science, people and discoveries shaping our goal. Join us as we explore the research and stories happening every day at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

Angela Levins, PR Director
We’re joined today by Madison Thornhill. She is a biologist here with the Marine Mammal Research Program. Welcome, Madison. Thank you for joining us.

Madison Thornhill, Biologist, Marine Mammal Research Program
Hey, thanks for having me.

Levins
We’re going to chat about dolphins today. And I think probably the first thing that we should get right out of the gate is what type of dolphins do we find in the northern Gulf?

Thornhill
We have fourteen different species here in the Gulf. Primarily what we see in Alabama are your common bottlenose. And every once in a while we’ll see an Atlantic spotted.

Levins
What is the difference between the Atlantic spotted and the bottlenose that we would see?

Thornhill
Well, your bottlenose is, you know, your most popular dolphin. Think Flipper or Winter the Dolphin from Dolphin Tale. They’re also like a little bit more leaner and longer than your common bottlenose. They also have spots.

Levins
So the biggest difference between the two is one has spots and one doesn’t. Are dolphins saltwater or freshwater?

Thornhill
There are freshwater species, but most of them are primarily saltwater. And that’s pretty important for our area because Mobile Bay has a lot of freshwater influx. We’ll see animals who do have freshwater lesions from not spending enough time in saltwater.

Levins
So if they’re in freshwater for too long, it actually harms them.

Thornhill
Yeah.

Levins
One of the things that I find most interesting about dolphins is they really have the ability to give us an idea of what’s happening in our water.

Thornhill
Absolutely. We have a project going on called One Health, and it’s where we study dolphins, humans, and the environment and how they all coexist and overlap and what one thing means to another.

Levins
And that’s important to note that if we’re having a large dolphin, mortality and mortality means that we’re losing dolphins. When y’all necropsy or do an animal autopsy, that you can maybe be able to pinpoint some things happening in the water that are leading to it.

Thornhill
Absolutely. Think of dolphins in the bay like a canary in a cave.

Levins
Tell us about the canary in the cave, because some people may not know that.

Thornhill
Okay, so when the coal miners would go into a cave or somewhere that had a like deep drop, they would send a canary in. And if the canary stopped singing or unfortunately expired, it was a sign that it maybe wasn’t safe to go inside that cave.

Levins
So, we use our dolphins as a way to make sure we can get in the water.

Thornhill
Yeah.

Levins
Walking away from the health side of things, let’s just talk about dolphins in general. Do they travel in packs? And do you call it a pack?

Thornhill
Some people call it a pod, but they’re called fission fusion groups. From what I know, there are some that will stay in a group their whole life. Then they get to be teenagers and they’ll go and do their own thing. And then maybe when they get a little bit older, they’ll come back and it’s just kind of like a big back and forth kind of thing.

Levins
Do dolphins migrate? Like we know with manatees? They come from Florida and then they get warmer and they come up here. But are dolphins kind of stuck to an area or do they migrate along the area?

Thornhill
Some of them do and some of them don’t. We call them transients. So the ones who are kind of passing through or residents like we have a Alabama dolphin project and that studies the dolphins that are here in mobile Bay. And some of them we see three, four, five, six, seven times and some of them we see once. So it might be safe to assume that those guys that we’ve only seen once might just be a transient species passing through.

Levins
Okay. So how do you know if a dolphin’s been here before?

Thornhill Their dorsal fin is very similar to a human fingerprint. With babies, it’s a little hard to ID them because they get these aches and nicks and notches on their dorsal fins as they age. So yeah, you can just take a picture of a dolphin’s dorsal fin, put it in a database, sort through hundreds and hundreds of photos until you eventually find a match.

Levins
So hundreds and hundreds of dolphins out there, and you’re saying that every single one of them has a very unique dorsal fin, that you would be able to pinpoint small things between one and two?

Thornhill
Yeah.

Levins
So what are the things I know you said like the rakes and the and the notches, but is it I’m assuming it’s the shape of them.

Thornhill
It could be the shape. Really the big thing are those nicks and notches on the back, but they might have an injury. Maybe they got unfortunately entangled and have some pretty distinct scarring.

Levins
Talking about the babies. Do the babies stay with their mom?

Thornhill
For at least a couple of years, some females might stay with their mom their entire lives, and some males might get kind of cast out at a certain age where they become rambunctious teenagers.

Levins
I know that you study dead dolphins, and so let’s go to that side of things. Let’s talk about the Alabama Marine Mammal Stranding Network and the important work that y’all do here. You are the stranding response team for the entire Alabama coastal area or do you go into Louisiana and Florida?

Thornhill
For dolphins, it’s typically Alabama. But we do the stranding network likes to help out our team wherever we can. A couple of weeks ago, we went out and we assisted the Florida Panhandle Marine Institute. They were just absolutely getting swamped with strandings. And we were like, hey, we have the truck in the time, so let’s do what we can to help our team out over here. And for manatees, we respond to, uh, Mississippi and Alabama. But if Fish and Wildlife calls us and it’s like, hey, we have a manatee on the Panhandle, we’re like, let’s save you that eight hour drive and help our team out. It’s always good to help folks out.

Levins
So when y’all respond to it. Let’s just start from the top of it. You have somebody that’s, you know, spotted a dolphin. You know, that’s and I’m assuming they appear to be in distress or they’re stranded, meaning that they’ve washed up on the beach. Um, you know, what is what’s kind of the process?

Thornhill
So step one is informing the team. If it’s a live animal, it’s a little bit more tricky. For a dead animal, we have about twenty four hours to pretty much respond to it and. Let Noah know that there’s a dead animal in the area, a live dolphin. We have two hours. So it’s an absolutely all hands on deck. Go, go, go kind of thing. Um, a lot of times we will call in our law enforcement just so that we can have someone on the scene within two hours to monitor that animal for us. And our agency partners are great. They usually drop everything if they can to help us out.

Levins
So if I’m walking the beach or if I’m in an area where I run across a dolphin, um, what what do I do? I mean, do I know I call you first call the Alabama Marine Mammal Stranding Network first? but what do I do as the person standing? Do I stay with it? Do I roll it over? Do I, do I do anything with it?

Thornhill
I would definitely recommend not touching it. Um, especially if it’s if it’s a dead animal. It’s already dead. It’s not getting any better. You know, it’ll be okay. Um, if you happen to have gloves or a trash bag on you and it’s in the tide line, I might ask you to move it out of it, but as far as dead animals, there’s absolutely no need to stay with it a live animal. We’re absolutely going to ask you to stay with that animal. We might ask you for a heart rate of respiration. And if the animal’s in the water, we might ask you to. If you have towels with you to make a makeshift stretcher and get it out of the water. But, um, we usually try not to ask the general public to put hands on it, um, without our permission.

Levins
But I hear one thing that you didn’t tell me to do is you did not tell me to put it back in the water. Why?

Thornhill
Well, they stranded for a reason, and when they strand, they’re usually sick, injured and probably definitely disoriented. So when you push it back one, it makes my team harder for it to respond to. And I’m just going to ask you to take it right back out of the water anyways. Um, but two, there’s a chance that it could strand. So it just went through all of that just to do it again. It could drown or unfortunately die.

Levins
So first thing we want to do is we want to call the Alabama Marine Mammal Stranding Network. And what is that number?

Thornhill
877-WHALE-HELP.

Levins
877-WHALE-HELP are there any fun facts that we did not touch on?

Thornhill
Okay, my fun fact again, because I deal with the dead ones and not the alive ones. So I see a lot of body parts are their kidneys. They have reticulated kidneys, which just means that the entirety of their kidney is like a capsule of tiny little mini kidneys. And that just helps with their salt water exchange so they can stay hydrated. And what’s cool about that is bears have it too.

Levins
Oh, really? So are bears and dolphins the only two that have it or is it.

Thornhill
I’m unsure.

Levins
Madison, thank you so much for joining us for sharing some information about live and expired dolphins. As we know that your experience is with the expired side again, Alabama Marine Mammal Stranding Network. If you spot a dolphin in the area that appears to be in distress, whether it’s alive or dead, you want to call the network as soon as possible. Let’s give them that number one more time.

Thornhill
877-WHALE-HELP.

Levins
All right. And we appreciate you joining us.

Thornhill
Yeah, thanks.