Dr. Helen Bailey's Chesapeake DolphinWatch presentation, Photo by Tania Richardson Remaly in the Chesapeake Bay, Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology. Now Demi’s grandchildren are sponging. Or, even better, join the Chesapeake Dolphin Watch—chesapeakedolphinwatch.org. "As we paddled in Rudee lake Randy pointed out herons, and an eagle nest and included a few yoga poses, all of which helped make me comfortable moving on the board." You simply point to where you saw the dolphin or use your current location and tell us about how many you saw. You can simply point to where you saw the dolphin or use your current location and tell us about how many you saw. DolphinWatchers can dive into a recording of Dr. Helen Bailey's Chesapeake DolphinWatch presentation as seen below. The recording includes presentation slides, closed captioning, and Q&A from the audience. The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Chesapeake Biological Laboratory’s Dr. Helen Baily collaborates with the Potomac-Chesapeake program through the lab’s largely crowd-sourced Chesapeake Dolphin Watch effort, which attracts bay-wide sighting information from boaters through a smart-phone app— chesapeakdolphinwatch.org. The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Chesapeake Biological Laboratory’s Dr. Helen Baily collaborates with the Potomac-Chesapeake program through the lab’s largely crowd-sourced Chesapeake Dolphin Watch effort, which attracts bay-wide sighting information from boaters through a smart-phone app—chesapeakdolphinwatch.org. Helen Bailey and her team at UMCES launched Dolphin Watch in 2017, which according to their website allows citizens to report sightings of dolphins in the bay … We need your help to find out! Visits to her Virginia cottage, which were originally going to be a break from work, soon took on a new focus, and the Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project was born. Amber Fandel, Research Analyst with the Chesapeake Biological Lab has been investigating dolphin behavior as part of conservation efforts across the U.S. since 2012. Three years after launching the wildly popular app, Chesapeake DolphinWatch put together a brief summary of what we learned from your sighting reports. Two hundred dolphins were identified the first year, 500 the next year, and now, over 1,200 have been sighted. But we know very little about them. The Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project contributes and compares data and images of dorsal fins with other scientists up and down the Atlantic Seaboard through a central database of dorsal fin images (OBIS-SEAMAP). The sponging method of hunting is primarily handed down from mother to daughter, and Mann has witnessed four generations using it. Graduate student Ann-Marie Jacoby noticed pools of blood in the water. It quickly became so popular that the existing staff couldn’t validate the sightings being reported. “This can lead to some funny, bipartisan affiliations,” Mann says. Over 2,000 sightings were reported because since Chesapeake Dolphin Watch was launched in late June 2017. High-density locations include the Potomac River, the Chester River and areas near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Keep submitting your sightings into the Chesapeake DolphinWatch app! “I’d been traveling halfway around the world for over 30 years, studying dolphins, and the day we closed on our house on the Northern Neck, there were dolphins in the backyard,” she says. For the past 33 years, Janet Mann, Ph.D., Professor of Biology & Psychology at Georgetown University studied the bottlenose dolphin population in Shark Bay, Australia. Later that day, Patsy and Gwendolyn swam by Mann’s backyard, and she saw them together again in October. In just 14 initial days on the water, the team identified 193 dolphins (including 27 mother-calf pairs) in a 37 square kilometer area, an extremely high density compared to the Shark Bay observations, which has one of the highest bottlenose dolphin densities in the world. By studying the southward spread of the virus, scientists hope to understand migration patterns and interactions between populations. By tracking the occurrence of dolphins and their movements, we’ll gain a better understanding of how bottlenose dolphins use the Bay and how to protect them in our local waters. In both 2017 and 2018, total reported sightings peaked in the month of July. It’s citizen science at its best. See where […] Chesapeake and Potomac dolphin populations had been the least studied on the Atlantic Seaboard. Keeping tabs on the Bay’s dolphin population. The mother was named Patsy Mink after the first non-Caucasian U.S. congresswoman, so they named the calf after her daughter Gwendolyn. More than 2,000 dolphin sightings have been reported to Chesapeake Dolphin Watch, a project of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, since July 2017. Join us as she shares where and when dolphins are being sighted and how you can help track their progress up the Bay. But she needs your help spotting dolphins in the Bay. The Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project maintains an identification library of images at pcdolphinproject.org where you can check to see if a dolphin you have seen is on the list. Thank you for all of your support! In this activity, a dolphin uses a sea sponge as a tool by using a conical sponge on its beak as protection from the rough sea floor substrate while searching for fish. View my sightings. You can learn more about DolphinWatch and Dr. Bailey's research. 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