New Days for the Dolphins

Innovative programs from Harbor Branch are helping to protect the lovable residents of the Indian River Lagoon

Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University:

New Days for the Dolphins

Innovative programs from Harbor Branch are helping to protect the lovable residents of the Indian River Lagoon.

new days for the dolphins

BY Erick GiLl

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Harbor Branch rescue team leaders Eric Zolman, left, and Steve McCulloch, center, safely secure injured dolphin “Jax” for treatment of his injuries. He was later transferred by HBOI’s marine mammal ambulance to rehabilitation facilities near Panama City.

S.D. McCulloch

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Dr. J. Goldstein

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n March of last year, residents in the Jacksonville area noticed a juvenile dolphin foraging around the St. John’s river basin looking for food.

Scarred and alone, the dolphin appeared to be the victim of a shark attack; he had open skin lesions and was fighting to stay alive, probing crab pots that dotted the river. There was also the concern he might become entangled and drown.

Stephen McCulloch, program manager of Marine Mammal Research & Conservation at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, now part of Florida Atlantic University, was part of a multi-agency team that was able to rescue the 8-month-old dolphin, dubbed “Jax.” Ideally, McCulloch and the staff from Harbor Branch would have loaded up the wounded dolphin and transported him back to their campus in Fort Pierce, where Jax would have been examined and rehabilitated until he was healthy enough to be returned to the wild.

But since Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne decided to remind Treasure Coast residents of the power that Mother Nature packs, Harbor Branch has been without a marine mammal rehabilitation facility since September 2004.

After Jax was safely secured by the collections team, he was examined by HBOI staff veterinarian Dr. Juli Goldstein, who determined that the dolphin was in urgent need of care and medical treatment. Rather than euthanize

Right: Neonate dolphin “May Day” was rescued in the Indian River Lagoon after his mother was killed by sharks. Following a near-death experience he was renamed “Lazarus” and underwent 18 months of rehabilitation in the safety of a Harbor Branch pool that was later destroyed by the 2004 hurricanes.

the animal, the rescue crew gently loaded him into Harbor Branch’s Marine Mammal Ambulance, a specially designed Ford-F450 cargo truck that has been transformed into an environmentally-controlled transportation system, for the four-hour trip to Panama City’s Gulf World Marine Park.

Jax was able to recuperate at the marine park, but after a rehabilitative stay of nine months, National Marine Fisheries officials decided

that he wasn’t fit to return to the wild and deemed him “non-releasable.” So the Harbor Branch staff once again gave Jax an escort.

This time it was a 13-hour waterto-water transport to the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key, where on January 8 he became part of the “full-time staff” that helps educate the general public on the dangers that humans pose to marine life.

“I can’t say enough about the work McCulloch and his co-director, Dr. Greg Bossart, have done,” says Armando “Mandy” Rodriguez,

co-founder and executive president of the Dolphin Research Center.

Rodriguez has known and worked with the two men for more than three decades and believes that Harbor Branch’s staff is leading the way when it comes to marine mammal protection and education.

“It says a lot about us as people that we came together to rescue this little guy,” he adds. “When Jax was discovered, he had lost his mother and was badly beaten up. It took a lot of gumption for him to pull through this. We should all take a page from his book.”

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ccording to Rodriguez, both McCulloch and Dr. Bossart have already taken a page out of Jax’s book. They too have the gumption and determination to make a difference, and have been doing so at HBOI for the past 10 years.

On the Harbor Branch campus, just yards away from North America’s most bio-diverse estuaries, the Marine Mammal Research & Conservation Program maintains its administrative offices in a donated E. Murdoch - NOAA/NMFS/ Permit No. 998-1678-00 REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION ©VERO BEACH MAGAZINE

HBOI senior scientist Dr. Greg Bossart and dolphin-rescue program founder Steve McCulloch collect a blowhole cytology from a Lagoon dolphin.

Since 2003, more than 140 dolphins have been safely sampled and released after undergoing an exam that lasts 30-40 minutes.

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E. Howells – Harbor Branch - NOAA/NMFS LOA S. D. McCulloch

Kenny Kroell and Steve McCulloch work on a dolphin calf that had become entangled in fishing gear. After recuperation, the calf was returned to her mother on Mother’s Day, 2007. Recent photo IDs have confirmed that both the mother and calf are alive and well today.

duction to their long-lost dolphin counterparts, McCulloch and fellow Harbor Branch research associate Marilyn Mazzoil began searching the library to research additional data on dolphins, only to find that there wasn’t a lot of information available. Little more than a decade later, that quest for information continues.

Since the days of “Bogie and Bacall,” Harbor Branch’s Marine Mammal Program has expanded from a staff of two to 12. More than 1,000 dolphins have been “catalogued” in the Indian River Lagoon by capturing and collecting high-resolution digital photographs of these animals for photo-identification. And since 1999, the division’s staff has responded to more than 200 strandings, rehabilitating and releasing more than a dozen dolphins back into the lagoon.

The success of the Harbor Branch program is evident not only by the number of dolphins saved and catalogued, but by the depth of scientific achievements that Dr. Bossart proudly points to.

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In Harbor Branch’s marine mammal ambulance, two dolphins, “Jackie” and “Jill,” receive emergency care after they were rescued in the Gulf of Mexico. The HBOI program played a vital role in the rescue of eight Hurricane Katrina dolphins that now reside in the Bahamas.

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home that features a large statute of a manatee on the front porch.

The program started in 1996 with the rehabilitation and release of two Indian River Lagoon dolphins, “Bogie and Bacall.”

Both had been captured in the lagoon in 1988 for a public display park in the Florida Keys. They became instant celebrities when they were returned to the lagoon as part of a planned “native reintroduction” project in 1995. Following their eventual release and reintro-

ll of this work becomes much easier to understand when you realize that the dolphins that inhabit the lagoon are like the “canary in the coal mine. ” As Dr. Bossart explains, “Marine mammals are proving to be important sentinels for oceans and human health due to their unique natural attributes and the fact that they’re at the top of the food chain.”

Recently, Dr. Bossart has developed a comparative health assessment study that has examined 90 bottlenose dolphins inhabiting coastal estuaries near Charleston, S.C., and 140 from the Indian River Lagoon from 2003-2007.

And while he manages all of the

S. Bechdel / NOAA/NMFS Permit No. 998-1678-00

medical and scientific aspects of this ground-breaking research project, it’s McCulloch and his team who manage the logistics and resources needed to safely capture, sample and release Dr. Bossart’s marine patients. That’s no easy job.

According to McCulloch, “It’s like trying to rescue an animal like Jax and provide a Mayo Clinic-style physical exam, 240 times.”

A Harbor Branch team carefully raises an Indian River Lagoon dolphin to the stern of a processing boat for a brief medical exam and health assessment.

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S. D. McCulloch / NOAA/NMFS Permit No. 998-1678-00

A Lagoon dolphin is weighed and then slowly hoisted aboard a specially designed Harbor Branch boat that serves as a floating examination suite.

A laboratory boat and safety boat is rafted to either side of the processing boat to ensure safety and facilitate the sampling process.

M. Mazzoil / NOAA/NMFS Permit No. 998-1678-00

n order to plan and execute such a complicated field study requires a great deal of time, money and experience.

Annual efforts require the use of a dozen boats, some of which serve as floating laboratories and examination platforms, as well as a seasoned team of 60 or more professionals. Some have marine mammal experience, some have laboratory skills, and always there are aspiring veterinarian students, interns and specialists eager to work under McCulloch and Bossart’s watchful supervision.

Once safely secured, each dolphin is carefully handled and monitored. Each health examination takes Dr. Bossart roughly 40 minutes. During that time, he conducts a complete physical examination (weight, measurements, body condition, etc.), an ultrasound survey and the collection of an entire suite of traditional and specialized clinicopathologic (blood, urine, fecal, blubber, etc.) samples.

The samples are then analyzed by a team of some 40 collaborators, including database managers who must contend with a voluminous amount of data. The results, as well as the scientific success of the program, are measured in part by the 54 peer-reviewed journal publications generated by Bossart and his fellow collaborators in the last seven years. More than half

Surrounded by a team of more than 40 professionals, Dr. Bossart (at head of dolphin) directs a comprehensive medical examination that will determine the dolphin’s health and later aid resource managers in implementing and evaluating conservation initiatives.

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Paul Milette Palm Beach Post

“We’re starting to see some very worrisome trends with this toxic compound in the lagoon,” Bossart says.

“What this means at this point, we certainly don’t know.”

Just how such levels of methylmercury, and other trace elements that come from fertilizer and other industrial processes, got into the lagoon remains a mystery.

The other trend is that the Indian River Lagoon dolphins carry bacteria in their intestines resistant to many antibiotics, including penicillin. Bossart’s recent research shows that one of every five bottlenose dolphins carries the so-called “super bug.” At this point, the bacteria appear harmless to the animals, but could trigger disease in any with weakened immune systems.

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At any time of the day or night, Harbor Branch marine mammal staff can be called upon to respond to dozens of stranding events like this mass stranding of 37 rough-toothed dolphins that occurred on Hutchinson Island in August 2004.

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Paul Milette Palm Beach Post

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of them are related to the health of dolphins in the Indian River Lagoon.

When translated, those results are disturbing for a variety of reasons. Dolphins from both populations had a high prevalence of definite disease (21 percent in Charleston / 36 percent in the Indian River Lagoon) and less than half at each site were classified as being in normal health (49 percent in Charleston / 39 percent in the lagoon).

The definite disease category contained dolphins with two diseases: lobomycosis and orogenital sessile papillomatosis, which accounted for 68 percent of the diagnoses. Both diseases are occurring in epidemic proportions in the lagoon and are associated with specific immunologic conditions, that may have an environmental basis. In other words, the “canary in the coal mine” is sick.

Two of the more disturbing trends in Indian River Lagoon dolphins are rising levels of mercury and a high prevalence of antibiotic resistant E. coli. What stands out for Bossart was the fact that lagoon dolphins had a level of methylmercury four times higher than their brethren in Charleston, S.C., which is a far more industrialized area.

o date, there is no evidence that the antibiotic-resistant bacteria has caused human illness in the lagoon region. However, researchers caution that people exposed to higher concentrations of the “super” E. coli bacteria could face an increased risk of potentially deadly digestive or skin infections by eating the same seafood or swimming in the same lagoon waters as the dolphins.

Bossart suggests that the resistant bacteria could be seeping into the lagoon from sewage treatment plants, septic tanks and farm runoff. “What I think we’re seeing right now is the tip of the iceberg,” cautions the

Surrounded by dolphins at the HBOI critical care pool, staffers work to aid and comfort seven stranded dolphins, three of whom would later be rehabilitated and released to the open sea. Just five weeks after this picture was taken, the hurricanes of 2004 would destroy these muchneeded facilities.

E. Howells / NOAA/NMFS Permit No. 998-1678-00

New infectious diseases, elevated mercury contamination and even resistance to antibiotics are increasingly prevalent amongst the lagoon’s dolphin population. Here an adult dolphin called “Patches” displays a fungal zoonotic known as lobomycosis, a disease known only to humans and dolphins.

S.D. McCulloch

scientist, who also holds a degree in pathology.

There are other concerns: Two emerging diseases, a chronic fungal skin infection called lobomycosis and a newly discovered tumorinducing herpes virus accounted for 31 of the 51 “definite disease” diagnoses, about 61 percent of the total. Lobomycosis occurs in “epidemic proportions in the southern lagoon,” the researchers reported, but it wasn’t seen in the northern lagoon or in the South Carolina dolphins.

“It’s only found in dolphins and people,” says Bossart. “But I don’t think the dolphins are getting it from humans.”

Thus, this Harbor Branch-based research has documented new complex diseases involving emerging infectious, immunologic and neoplastic components coupled with toxicologic and other data that provide important information on aquatic ecosystem health.

“Dolphin sentinels can provide an early warning system of potential negative environmental trends,” explains Bossart. “These warnings may permit the better management of negative impacts on oceans and human health.

This is especially important since much of the existing disease data suggests that complex interactions occur among the anthropogenic toxins, immunologic and/or infectious organisms in marine mammals that share a coastal environment with humans.” “ With the New Year came news of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution’s official partnership with Florida Atlantic University.

One of the new opportunities that will occur as a result of the partnership is the agreement by both FAU and HBOI officials to refurbish Seward Johnson’s home

“Just like a human infant, neonate dolphins require special 24/7 care, a gentle touch and a dedicated staff,” says Steve McCulloch. Pictured here, “Rocket Man,” a four-week-old baby dolphin, is handfed a special “baby dolphin” formula that was developed by Harbor Branch specialists.

on the Harbor Branch campus and convert it into a marine mammal rehabilitation center.

The Johnson home, which once belonged to the Harbor Branch founder, has been uninhabited since the 2004 hurricanes. Yet, with an existing large circular but shallow pool, Dr. Bossart says the facility is ideal for providing critical care and temporary housing for dolphins needing short-term rehabilitation.

“We’ve used the pool for dolphin rehabilitation in the past,” he says.

“Its design allows me to jump in there and work directly with the dolphins. That’s step one. Once we get that up and running, we’ll be back in business.”

While both Bossart and McCulloch are eager to have a rehab facility, “We insist on building things right for the animals,” McCulloch says.

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M. Mazzoil / NOAA/NMFS Permit No. 998-1678-00

During the past decade, the two have conserved roughly $2 million of their limited funding to build a brand-new, long-term rehabilitation facility based on original estimates that were done a few years ago.

“With rising construction and materials costs, the $2 million is not enough to build an effective stranding/quarantine center with the deeper pools needed to provide extended care,” McCulloch explains. “It’s more like $4.5 million in today’s cost, plus an operating endowment of at least $10 million.

Nothing costs less than doing it right the first time.”

Instead of pouring the money into a new facility that would end up being inadequate, McCulloch hopes to use part of the $2 million, along with money that was set aside to raze the structure, to refurbish the Johnson home.

First initiated in 1996 by scientific investigators Marilyn Mazzoil and Steve McCulloch, Harbor Branch Photo-ID researchers like Elisabeth Howells and Sarah Bechdel can often be seen working to identify more than a thousand dolphins in the Indian River Lagoon.

Population studies are the basis for all other research conducted, including the health assessments.

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here are plans to fasttrack the renovation of the Johnson home in order to have it ready to house dolphins by the end of the year. The reasoning behind the fast track is that for every day the project is delayed, it could mean another day that a dolphin might be rescued without a “hospital” to recover in.

Since the fall, Harbor Branch crews have responded to several dolphin strandings where the animals had to be euthanized because McCulloch and his team couldn’t find a rehab facility that could properly house and treat them.

Because the institution has one of the only special-equipped marine mammal transportation vehicles in the state, Harbor Branch’s staff is often one of the first responders on the scene. One recent stranding involved keeping a wounded dolphin in the pool at Grand Harbor as McCulloch called around the state

Every time a motorist purchases one of the specialty plates shown here, the revenue goes to the protection of dolphins ($20) or whales ($25). Plates are available at your Tax Collectors’ office, tag agencies, and online at www.protectwilddolphins.org and www.protectfloridawhales.org.

looking for a facility that had room to house the patient.

The average cost to rehabilitate a dolphin is roughly $1,200 a day for the first 30 days. Because of the expense, researchers have to make quick decisions on whether or not an animal has a realistic chance of survival. Consequently, Harbor Branch would ideally have a $10 million endowment for the operation of a stranding center. An endowment of this size would generate adequate annual funding to rehabilitate 12 animals each year.

The historical data suggests that there is a major need for such a

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ll that remains of what was Harbor Branch’s original marine mammal stranding center since Frances and

Dr. J. Goldstein

facility on the Treasure Coast.

Overall, more than 40 percent of all stranding events occur in the Indian River Lagoon region.

Presently, the nearest facility is the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, more than 180 miles away. Another facility in the Keys is more than 200 miles away, five hours by ambulance.

To address this need, Harbor Branch organized an event last October with renowned marine life artist Robert Wyland, known simply as “Wyland.” The event was a huge success as Wyland spent a full day at Harbor Branch decorating canvases with nearly 75 area children. Later that evening, he auctioned off his work, demonstrating his Japanese-inspired brush technique.

The event was part of a crosscountry trip for the artist’s annual Clean Water Tour, designed to teach young people about the importance of a clean environment and healthy oceans, rivers, lakes and wetlands. It also raised $40,000 to benefit the Wyland Foundation and Harbor Branch’s new Marine Mammal Stranding Center.

“More than that,” says McCulloch, “it established a renewed interest in everything that Harbor Branch does, as well as the insitution’s new partnership with Florida Atlantic University. It also demonstrated the community’s renewed interest in Harbor Branch.

We depend upon community, corporate and private donor support to maintain and grow our Harbor Branch programs. Donor support is a critical part of our programs.”

A lagoon dolphin known as “Winter” became entangled in a crab pot line and subsequently lost her tail fluke. Now residing at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, Dr. Juli Goldstein and dolphin care specialist Steve McCulloch are advising a research committee in the design and application of a prosthetic tail fluke. Of special note is that the new prosthetic technologies developed for the tailless dolphin are now helping improve such devices worn by military amputees returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jeanne blew through the Treasure Coast in September 2004 is a concrete slab and a few steel beams. Next to the near-vacant site, several manatees bob their heads out of a channel which houses a fleet of vessels that are part of the program’s research arsenal. This is thanks to corporate sponsors such as Bombardier and Twin Vee, who provided two Sea Doos and three research boats to assist with rescues and the photo-identification program. Canon also supplies the program with high-resolution digital cameras to help document and identify dolphins in the lagoon, while Idexx provides the staff with devices used to sample and analyze blood from the mammals.

“The goal is to not only to help dolphins, but build a database of dolphin life history, including genetics and genomics,” McCulloch explains. “All of this information about the health, structure and population of the lagoon dolphins, including their movement, distribution, habitat utilization and reproductive success, is overlaid on top of water quality and source point pollution data.

“This then starts to form a simplified big picture view of how our human activities impact the environment. When brought together with the Global Information System (GIS) technologies we utilize, the synthesized information can be used to develop predictive models and evaluate environmental management strategies.”

To add to this impressive database of dolphin health, structure and life history, McCulloch and his talented team not only use photographs but utilize HBOI’s collection of dolphin tissues, one of the

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S. D. McCulloch

“It’s one of the best necropsy facilities in the world,” Dr. Bossart says.

Similar to a scene out of CSI: Miami, it can take four to eight hours for three experienced professionals to conduct a full necropsy on a large marine mammal. But the lab also becomes a classroom where researchers teach while trying to isolate the cause of death and learning more about the life history of each individual animal.

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A sad day for HBOI’s marine mammal staff: The oldest known male lagoon dolphin “Ziggy,” age 31, is found dead along the banks of the lagoon near Ft. Pierce. Every dolphin is carefully examined at HBOI’s pathology lab to determine cause of death and contribute to a “life history” database. In this case, the cause of death was a $4 fishing lure. “Human and fishery interactions are rapidly increasing in the lagoon and education is the key to limit injuries to all marine wild life,” McCulloch cautions.

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largest in the state. If there are diseased dolphins on the west coast of Florida stranding themselves, Dr. Bossart and his staff can compare their tissue to their samples from a mass stranding that may have occurred here.

“Again, from a management standpoint, such comparative data is essential to resource managers,” McCulloch adds. “And that is yet another valuable asset of our program.”

McCulloch and his staff have also rebuilt their necropsy lab, a sterile building that looks like an antiseptic garage with a grated floor and a large stainless steel autopsy table. In the program’s infancy, it was hard to determine the exact cause of death for a dolphin or stranded whale because animals were often diagnosed in the field next to mosquito-ridden mangrove swamps or standing on the beach in the blazing sun.

Now necropsies (an animal autopsy) can be conducted in a controlled and self-contained working environment with just two people hoisting a 3,000-pound animal from their retrofitted cargo truck to the metal surgical table, thanks to a traveling hoist lift complete with a digital scale.

eanwhile, Bossart and McCulloch are striving to create collaborative partnerships with other centers around the state, such as Hubbs-Sea World, Marineland and Mote Marine Labs, as well as several colleges and universities. McCulloch appreciates not only fellow scientists, but artists and environmentalists such as Guy Harvey and Wyland, who have developed foundations to create awareness by combining science with art. Both artists have donated their artistic talents to Harbor Branch’s research and conservation efforts.

“One person can make a difference: Wyland is proof of that, and so is Guy Harvey. And I hope to be proof of that too,” says McCulloch, who is a man with a scientist’s heart and a business and marketing mind.

All of the research, fundraising, educational efforts and publishing that McCulloch has been a part of was without a formal education. When he first started the program, some questioned his ability to establish and conduct a “real” science program. That has long since changed. Bossart and McCulloch were recently among 29 animal conservationists from around the world to be nominated for the Indianapolis Prize, the

Gary Firstenberg

“Team work and collaboration are key to any successful endeavor,” notes Steve McCulloch, who each year assembles and manages a team of 60–80 specialists to complement the annual Indian River Lagoon dolphin health assessments being conducted by Dr. Bossart.

world’s leading award for animal conservation. While neither of them made it to the final six, McCulloch still feels proud that both he and his scientific partner were nominated.

“It serves to validates that the work we’re doing is serving a purpose and is being recognized on an international level,” says McCulloch. “It’s also special that two people from the same research facility in the same center were both nominated.”

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etween McCulloch and Dr. Bossart, the pair make a dynamic duo. McCulloch handles the business and logistics of the program, while Bossart handles the science. With a Ph.D. in manatee and dolphin immunology at Florida International University and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, Bossart has collaborative research projects with the National Marine Fisheries Service, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Miami Museum of Science. His research can be read in the

Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Veterinary Pathology, Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine, Veterinary Record, Florida Scientist and other journals.

While Dr. Bossart and the staff at Harbor Branch may be uncovering “disturbing trends in not only the eco-system but in the dolphins as well,” there are those that say, “Hey, it’s only a dolphin. What’s the big deal?”

McCulloch has a quick answer: “They’re the animals at the top of the food chain next to man. They’re affected by the same changes to their environment as we are, so that, in the world of science, these animals have real value to management issues.

“We need to save the dolphins because we’re next on the food chain. And if you don’t want to save the environment for your grandchildren’s children, at least think of the economic impact. Your property value and quality of life are both directly tied to the quality of the Indian River Lagoon.”

Officials estimate that saltwater recreational fish-

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S.D. McCulloch

A mother and calf playfully cavort in the wake of a passing ship.

Sadly, in a shallow water environment such as the Indian River Lagoon, more than 10 percent of the dolphin population shows evidence of scars and trauma due to boat strikes. Boaters in the Lagoon and elsewhere are encouraged to follow “Dolphin SMART” practices funded in part by Florida’s “Protect Wild Dolphins” specialty license plate.

HOW TO BE DOLPHIN SMART Bottlenose dolphins are frequently seen in Florida’s coastal waters and can be easily viewed from shore or by boat.

Watching them in their natural habitat can be an exhilarating experience. However, when we approach wild dolphins too closely, move too quickly or make too much noise, we increase the risk of disrupting their natural behaviors, such as migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding and sheltering.

Dolphin SMART is a unique, voluntary education program that offers participation incentives for commercial dolphin viewing businesses that voluntarily follow the program’s criteria, and educate their customers about the important of the responsible viewing of wild dolphins in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS).

The purpose of the Dolphin SMART program is to:

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• Minimize the potential for wild dolphin harassment caused by commercial viewing activities.

• Reduce people’s expectations of wanting to closely interact with wild dolphins in a manner that may cause harassment.

• Eliminate advertising that creates expectations of engaging in activities that may cause harassment.

• Educate the public about the importance of responsibly viewing wild dolphins.

To learn more about the Dolphin SMART program, contact Celeste Weimer, Dolphin SMART Program Coordinator at (305) 743-2437, or visit the Dolphin SMART website at www.dolphinsmart.org.

ing from the lagoon generates $346 million per year in economic benefits, with the estimated economic value of the lagoon exceeding $700 million per year.

In addition to being one of the most diverse estuaries in the country, the lagoon pours $464 million into the economy through recreational activities alone. It’s a “biological highway” for many migratory bird species, and provides nearly 50 percent of eastern Florida’s fish catch and 90 percent of the state’s clams.

Despite this, McCulloch and Bossart are finding flame retardant in fatty tissues, antibiotic-resistant E. coli bacteria and high levels of mercury in dolphins from the Treasure Coast to South Carolina. Some mercury levels were 21 times higher than what’s allowed for human consumption.

“This is probably a direct result of human waste,” Bossart estimates. “The bottom line is that we’ve been using the ocean as a toilet and it is now catching up with us. What impacts these dolphins impacts us.”

Inside his office building, watching an archival VHS tape of a local newscast from several years ago featuring a small dolphin named “Rocket Man” that was rescued and rehabilitated, McCulloch looks like a proud parent.

“This is what we do—this is what we need to get back to doing,” he says. “Right now we really need the community to become more active in the development of all of Harbor Branch. While the stranding center is important to us, so is the institution we serve. We know there are people in this community who can write a check to get this facility built, and at the same time help support other Harbor Branch scientists who are working as hard as we are.

“Our program’s mission is simple: To protect wild dolphins and to protect Florida whales—that’s it.

Harbor Branch’s tag line is ‘Ocean Science for a Better World.’ We’re all a part of the same team and mission, working together towards common goals that work to preserve those natural and non-negotiable elements of life on which we all depend.

“Florida is fortunate to have such a rich regional resource, and we hope the community will continue to embrace Harbor Branch and all that we do here. It’s simply an amazing place with amazing people that do all kinds of amazing things.”

Regardless of when McCulloch and his partners at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution and Florida Atlantic University get their stranding center built, it’s a safe bet that McCulloch and Dr. Bossart, like Jax, have the gumption to follow through with their master plan. `