By Elizabeth Devitt, Bay Nature
About 60 coastal bottlenose dolphins have been spotted traveling from Southern California to the waters off Bodega Bay, pushing the northern limit of their range and leaving the scientists who study them with a mystery: Long-distance migrations are not unusual for marine mammals, but these dolphins are not making seasonal swims. Instead, said Bill Keener, a marine mammal biologist at Golden Gate Cetacean Research, the dolphins seem to be traveling up and down the coast without any sort of schedule.
Scientists have tracked the long-range swimmers with telephoto lenses by using close-up photos of the unique nicks and notches on the silhouette of each dolphin’s dorsal fin to compile a catalog of dolphin IDs. The questions arose when San Francisco Bay researchers checked their images against photo entries in a catalog kept by scientists farther down the coastand discovered a lot of matching images.
Read the complete story at Bay Nature.
