Celeste Parry

What we know about impacts on dolphin and whale populations – past, present, and future On April 20, 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig tragically killed 11 workers. The rig collapsed approximately 41 miles off the coast of Louisiana, starting a catastrophic flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Over an … Read more

2020 marks the 10 year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. This February, CARMMHA participated in discussions at the GOMOSES Oil Spill & Ecosystem Science Conference to help summarize a decade of scientific results. Dr. Cynthia Smith of the NMMF represented the marine mammal community on a panel to discuss the long-term impacts on marine … Read more

We are in the final stages of our analysis, so we thought we would highlight a CARMMHA consortium researcher who has been leading our statistical analysis and population modeling. Please read on to learn more about Len Thomas of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, in his own words… What is your role in the … Read more

How old is that dolphin? Unlike humans or other animal species, dolphins rarely show signs of external aging. We don’t see wrinkles or changes to hair color, so estimating the age of a wild dolphin during a veterinary examination can prove challenging. Knowledge of the dolphin’s age, however, is very important to understand their health … Read more

Last week our own Cormac Booth led two expert elicitation workshops at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego, as part of the CARMMHA project.  The workshops were a great success, providing a number of outputs for updating the population models. The outputs of each elicitation question were in the form of probability distributions which provide updated inputs to the … Read more

CARMMHA team members had a strong showing at the World Marine Mammal Conference in Barcelona, Spain. Here is a list of presentations and posters with CARMMHA co-authors. Radiographic assessment of pectoral fin bone maturation in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), as a novel technique to accurately estimate chronological age.Ashley Barratclough, Roberto Sanz-Requena, Luis Marti-Bonmati, Todd Schmitt, … Read more

The collaboration between the Girl Scouts of America and CARMMHA created an unparalleled opportunity for kids to experience marine mammal science careers. Kids in several coastal communities across the nation, including San Diego, New Orleans, and Chicago, learned about the detrimental consequences pollution can have on the environment and why it is important to maintain … Read more

We will use expert elicitation to fill key knowledge gaps in population models for a range of Gulf of Mexico cetacean species. Policymakers and managers are increasingly concerned about the effects of industries on wildlife populations, and in situations where management or conservation decisions need to be made, expert elicitation (asking experts for their judgments … Read more

Cardiotoxicity Assessment The CARMMHA Cardiac Team has developed and tested standardized cardiac health assessment techniques with both managed and wild bottlenose dolphins. Preliminary results were presented at a CARMMHA health assessment workshop in Chicago and publications are now in preparation. We are also working with collaborators at the University of Miami Acute Phase Proteins Lab to … Read more

NMMF welcomed Congressman Joe Cunningham and NOAA’s NOS Acting Assistant Administrator Nicole LeBoeuf as panelists at our sold out Charleston, SC screening of Dispatches from the Gulf 2. We had a dynamic discussion about the lessons learned from the DWH catastrophe and the effects of oil exposure on dolphins. Mayor John Tecklenburg joined the event as we … Read more

We first reported on dolphin YV7 last year in a post titled “Entangled Bottlenose Dolphin Rescued in Barataria Bay Recap”.  Fishing gear was cut loose from around her head in September of 2017 during a routine capture-release health assessment in Barataria Bay. Every year, CARMMHA researchers return to monitor pregnant females and document those that … Read more

Researchers from multiple consortia within the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) have proposed a new approach for monitoring the populations of whales and dolphin that live in the offshore waters of the Gulf.  The new program would be based on using a network of underwater recorders to listen for the sounds they produce and … Read more