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© Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute, taken under NOAA permit #26919. Funded by United States Army Corps of Engineers

Birth announcement! First right whale calf of the 2024 calving season spotted

November 29, 2023 - On November 28th, researchers from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute...
© Peter Flood

Two New England-based nonprofits awarded nearly $400k federal grant

© Peter Flood November 20, 2023 - Contact: Jake O'Neill, Conservation Law Foundation, (617) 850-1709,...
Right whale - Regina WDC

North Atlantic right whale population has stabilized

WDC attends Ropeless Consortium and North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium WDC was in Canada this...
Moana, Marineland France

Orca Moana dies suddenly at Marineland

Twelve-year old orca, Moana has died suddenly at the Marineland Antibes theme park facility in...

Begging for food from fishermen may be harming dolphins

Researchers at Savannah State University in the US have concluded that dolphins foraging for fish stuck in or stirred up by the long, submerged nets of local shrimp trawlers are passing on this knowledge and behaviour to other dolphins in their group.

 

However, the research, published in PLOS ONE, also makes reference to the trawling activity having wider, negative impacts on the dolphins, dividing the wider group into those that do beg or forage for fish in the nets, and those that don’t. As well as the physical risks to half the group who do get close to these shrimp nets, there is also a risk that the whole population will split completely into two sub populations (those that beg and those that don’t) that then don’t mix, and so reducing rates of reproduction.

Recently, researchers used data spanning 45 years to illustrate how contact with human’s puts dolphins at risk as they become ‘conditioned’ very quickly, and that this can place the dolphins in harm’s way.