Page 19 - Gateways_2017-2018 Winter

Dedication
to Dolphin
Conservation

Ensuring Dolphins’ Future
Through Education
and Action

Afin breaks the waves in Sarasota Bay, Florida,
and a gray shape emerges. It’s a bottlenose dolphin.
The crew of a nearby boat watches eagerly as the dolphin
glides easily through the coastal waters. The boat is
manned by Dr. Randy Wells and his colleagues, who
are all keen hunters—hunters of knowledge.

Wells is the director of the Chicago Zoological
Society’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program (SDRP),
which conducts the world’s longest-running study of a
wild dolphin population. For more than 47 years, the
program has charted the behavior, social structure, life
history, ecology, health, and changes in a long-term resi-
dent community of more than 160 bottlenose dolphins
along the central-west coast of Florida. (An overview of
the program was provided in the last issue of Gateways.)

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