Saving Abaco's Dolphins after Hurricane Dorian

Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are some of the largest marine fauna and top predators in The Bahamas’ Sea of Abaco’s nearshore ecosystem. On September 1st, 2019, hurricane Dorian, the strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the Atlantic, stalled over Abaco for 40 hours. The effects of extreme climatic events (ECEs) on ecosystems and wildlife populations are poorly understood because predicting the timing, intensity, and location of these rare events is difficult. As such, when ECEs occur in areas where long-term monitoring of flora and fauna exists, it is important to document these events and their impacts which we have been doing now for over 6 years.

While we can’t control major weather events such as hurricanes, we can work to control anthropomorphic pressures on this population. As we continue with our photo identification and hydrophone research, we have started an outreach campaign to inform various stakeholders of what we all can do to reduce pressure on the Sea of Abaco dolphins. We’re reaching into schools, teaching students about the dolphins in their backyard and having them help us create a slogan for our campaign. We are working with marinas and resorts that hold large fishing tournaments asking captains to reduce their speed while in the Sea of Abaco. We’re working with dockmasters at marinas to make sighting reports to inform habitat use areas as well as identifying which dolphins are using those areas.