Strandings Case Studies
Stranding case studies
Dolphin Research Center Marine Mammal Rescue Team Experiences
Many animals have come into our lives and touched our hearts. In the following stories, we try to share some of the poignancy and privilege of our encounters with these visitors from the sea.
Strandings Case Studies
A Different Kind Of Dolphin
On a Saturday morning in October 1987, a local fisherman called DRC with the news that he had brought a dolphin into the Sugarloaf Marina, some 15 miles north of Key West. This was not the dolphin fish that local fishermen usually catch in the Keys, but the mammal dolphin, and a very small one
Read postCold Front
One of the more commonly stranded whales in the Florida Keys is the pygmy sperm whale, Kogia breviceps. Just before Thanksgiving in 1990, a whale of this species paid DRC a visit. It was a young female that stranded in the upper portion of the Keys. We brought the little lady to a saltwater pool
Read postFin Whale at Grassy Key
We sometimes wonder if the wild marine animals out there talk about Dolphin Research Center. Imagine our surprise when two pilot whales beached directly behind the Grassy Key home of several employees during the pilot whale strandings of April 1991 (see the “Sleepless Nights” case study below). Everyone thought the whales couldn’t have picked a
Read postSleepless Nights
It all began Saturday, March 30, 1991—the day before Easter. Until the call came in, this began like any other day at DRC. Then, at 9:15 a.m., a marina in Key West called to tell DRC that as many as twenty pilot whales were floundering in shallow water off the southern coast of Key West,
Read postMission: Manatee Rescue
Sugar and spice, and everything nice, that’s what baby manatees are made of. DRC experienced this first hand when we responded to a call from a Key Largo resident about an infant West Indian manatee, Trichechus manatus that had been swimming alone in her boat basin for three days. DRC recently had been issued a
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