The Wild Dolphin Project
In Their World on Their Terms

by Anne Earhart, Homeland Foundation

In June 1992 I was standing on the bow of the RV Stenella, heading east, as Florida receded into the distance. The twin hulls cut through the glassy water of the Gulf Stream and I could feel my excitement rising. I was on my way to the study site of the Wild Dolphin Project, the White Sand Ridge, a forty square mile area of the open ocean north of Grand Bahama Island. I would be visiting a group of spotted dolphins who have been studied for almost 10 years by marine mammologist, Dr. Denise Herzing.

Little did I know that over the next 10 years I would cross the Gulf Stream many more times to visit this group of dolphins whose names and histories I would soon learn. As the miles slipped by I began to think about how I came to be here.

As a child Dr. Doolittle was one of my favorite books. In college, I wrote a paper on “dolphin language” for a linguistic class and thus began a life-long fascination with marine mammals, especially whales and dolphins. While writing that paper I learned that dolphins are social mammals with a complex repertoire of sounds used for various situations and purposes. One of these sounds is echolocation or a series of clicks that bounce off a target and return to the dolphin’s brain via a fat filled jawbone “receptor”. A second type are whistles, often called “signature” whistles, used to identify each other. And a third type, “burst pulses” of sound, can resemble the proverbial barnyard with squawks, bleats and moans. Although many of the sounds are audible to the human ear, in and out of the water, some of the dolphin’s sounds are in the ultrasonic range. Many of these ultrasonic sounds have been recorded only in captive situations and not from wild, free ranging groups of dolphins.

All of this painted a fascinating picture of dolphin society–– intelligent, complex, social animals with a large brain. I wanted to know more, but dolphins lived in the sea, usually far offshore. I never guessed that one day I would be able to swim side by side with them “in their world on their terms,” that is until I met Dr. Herzing of the Wild Dolphin Project in 1992 and had an opportunity to participate in one of her research expeditions.

Now I was president of the Homeland Foundation and had given a small grant to the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP). The first grant was a little bit of a stretch for us, given the difficulty of long term research offshore and the lack of much other funding for the project. But the project caught my interest the first time I heard about it so I decided to take a chance. I also vividly remembered a cover from a 1979 National Geographic Magazine a photo of a spotted dolphin suspended in crystal clear water. The story inside was about Sandy, a spotted dolphin in the Bahamas who seemed friendly and curious about the local sport divers. I had not forgotten that picture, or my wish to see a dolphin in calm, clear, warm water. Now I was on my way out to Denise’s study site.

Dr. Herzing is quite an extraordinary person. At this point in 1992 she was in her eighth year of what would become a twenty-year study of a group of about 240 individuals. I followed Jane Goodall’s long-term studies of chimps as well as Dian Fossey’s of gorillas, but the difficulty of a long-term study of an oceanic species was hard to imagine. The logistics of maintaining a boat, crew, and of course dealing with the weather are daunting. I realized this as a series of squalls and storms blew our way. The waters of the Bahamas can be incredibly clear and calm, but more often than not there are wind and waves to contend with, and the occasional hurricane to dodge. A boat in the Bahamas may sound luxurious but RV Stenella is a workboat and WDP prides itself on running a lean, mean machine.

Days are long and busy. There are two-hour watches throughout the fourteen-hour day. When dolphins are sighted their location, heading and numbers are entered into the daily log. If appropriate, we jumped in with video and still cameras in hand, and followed them. There can be strong currents, waves, and the dolphins are fast swimmers so, believe me you need to be a strong swimmer. At night we watched the day’s video, check IDs, and enter sightings and info into the database. Often, at night we would drift into deep water and set out lights, watching the dolphins chase needlefish and squid attracted by the light. And then there were the days with no dolphins. We would look and look but who knew where they had gone.

Above all, there is the difficulty in funding such an endeavor. Funding long-term research has been a tough sell, but I’ve always remembered that some of Jane Goodall’s most important discoveries came after year 20. Had she quit at year 15 and said “well, that’s long enough now, we know everything there is to know about chimps,” we would have had a very flawed view of chimpanzee society and their behavior.

We finally arrived at the study site and all hands were on deck, scanning the seas, on the look out for dolphins. I wondered how on earth Denise would tell the dolphins apart. Luckily, spotted dolphins have a pigmentation pattern that helps to identify individuals. Newborns have no spots and quickly become two tones. These gray and white two-tones are usually with their mothers or aunties, gradually becoming lightly speckled juveniles busily exploring their environment while jostling each other. They mature over the next few years into a mottled pattern. These young adults form fluid groups with other mottled dolphins and juveniles. The males begin forming tight coalitions and females begin associating with other females, especially when pregnant. The last grouping is the fused adults, heavily spotted with the tip of their rostrums becoming whiter with age. Besides the pigment patterns, there are nicks on dorsal fins or flukes, eye or throat marks and even under bites to use for identification. But it is no easy feat identifying a dolphin in the wild. And now I was going to have a chance to try it myself.

We found a group of dolphins and quickly donned our masks, fins and snorkels and slipped into the water. Denise carried her video camera equipped with hydrophones and slowly the dolphins came into focus. At long last I saw these mysterious creatures in their own world.

It is hard to put into words how I felt to finally be in the water with the dolphins. A calf broke away from his mother and sailed past me giving me my first up close and personal look at a dolphin. Then the mother came over and gave me the once over. As she looked straight into my eyes I couldn’t help but feel a kinship with this mother. I knew I was looking into the eyes of a sentient being, a protective mother. And her calf reminded me of my own wild and crazy eight-year-old son. As we climbed out of the water back into the rocking boat, I couldn’t help feeling like one of the luckiest people in the world.

During that first trip I learned much about dolphin behavior. I watched them chase fish, dig for eels in the sand, and crater feed––dig their heads almost all the way into the sand to come up with some delectable morsel. They traveled, rested, babysat, courted, mated, and even fought. I enjoyed watching their graceful bowriding and came to appreciate what social animals the dolphins are. Their world is all about relationships, family and friends. Sometimes, they met up with bottlenose dolphins. Their interactions could be friendly or, once in a while, incredibly violent.

Over the years we have watched young adult females maintain long-term association with their calves. Now we are seeing a third generation, as some of the animals we first saw as calves are having their own calves. Over the years I also began to recognize individuals–– Stubby, Little Gash, Katy and my favorite,Venus.

As the dolphin families have matured, so has our technology for observing and listening to them. For the first time in our nineteen-year study, our video has real-time, full-spectrum sound recording. We can now listen to ultrasonic sounds and correlate them with behavior. WDP is also working with Carnegie-Mellon University on an underwater computer with pattern recognition to develop a two-way communication system between humans and dolphins. It is essentially a real-time translator that recognizes vocalizations and allows real-time playback.

Are we getting close to cracking the code? I don’t know, but the ramifications of such an endeavor are enormous. How will entry into the world and language of dolphins alter our perception of and behavior towards other species? What kind of paradigm shifts might this create for humanity? What might we learn about survival––both the dolphin’s and our own? The answers to these questions are yet to be known, but the prospect is tantalizing enough to keep me coming back year after year to White Sand Ridge. I feel privileged to have been allowed a peek at the daily lives of dolphins, animals with brains not unlike my own. Besides, I want to know: will Venus have a calf this year and what kind of mother will she be?

Anne Earhart is president and founder of the Homeland Foundation. She is also vice-president of the board of directors of the Wild Dolphin Project.

For more information about the Wild Dolphin Project or to request information on participating in research trips, call 561-575-5660 or e-mail wilddolphinproject@earthlink.net. You can also visit their website at www.WildDolphinProject.org.

Anne G. Earhart in the water with the dolphins