Page 19 - Gateways_2017-2018 Winter
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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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