A mother dolphin glides gracefully through the water with her calf nestled by her side and another youngster nearby (above). “A calf learns to move without exerting a lot of energy by riding in its mother’s slipstream,” says Wells (at helm, right), searching for bottlenose dolphins in Florida’s Sarasota Bay with his research field coordinator Sue Hofmann. |
“It’s Nicklo,” says Wells, recognizing her immediately. He gave her that name because of a low nick in her fin, possibly from an encounter with a shark or a spinning outboard propeller motor. “She’s 49, one of the oldest known reproducing female dolphins in the world. We’ve seen her with four calves over the years. She had one last year.” He points. “See?” A second, smaller, silver body surfaces. As the boat idles, biologist Sue Hofmann picks up her camera and snaps pictures of Nicklo and the calf. In the bow, an Earthwatch volunteer reaches for a clipboard and scribbles time, water temperature, location, salinity, and other facts next to Nicklo’s formal name: FB15. Then, the two animals vanish. Wells throttles back and creeps along under the bridge, his eyes penetrating the glint on the water with help from polarized sunglasses. “Well, she sure gave us the slip,” he says.
A veterinary team assists Wells as he uses a tape measure and an ultrasonic device to measure the blubber thickness of a dolphin removed briefly from the water as part of a spot health evaluation of the Sarasota bottlenose population. During the checkup, the dolphin rests quietly on a foam pad in a shaded area of the boat and is sponged constantly. |
“Randy knows more about bottlenose dolphins than anyone,” says John Reynolds, chairman of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission. Wells and his colleagues in the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program have produced more than 100 articles for a variety of scientific publications. They clarified dolphins’ feeding patterns (by analyzing stomach contents); showed a connection between high levels of chlorinated hydrocarbons in dolphins’ blood and immune-system dysfunction; learned how dolphins interact with increasing boat traffic; did field tests to see if calves responded to their mothers’ signature whistles (they did); and used dna analysis to determine dolphin social structure.
Ms. Mayhem, a dolphin Wells first saw in 1976, escorts her calf Pumpkin in 1985. A decade later, Pumpkin barely survived when her fin was carved up by a boat propeller.
“Scientifically, it’s important to know how dolphin social structure works and how it compares with other mammals—lions, great apes,” and other marine animals, says Wells’s mentor, marine biologist Blair Irvine. “And Randy has written the book on the health of a population of wild animals. For example, if we see a dolphin die somewhere else, we can look at its blood values and compare what we find with this laboratory herd in Sarasota to see if it’s normal or not.” 
Wells, who lives next to these creatures on the narrow, 18-mile-long bay and often sails it in his little Sunfish, never tires of watching them: “They’re living in our backyards, almost literally, and living a life so different from ours, so successfully.” His work is far enough along that every revelation he makes about dolphin life seems to punctuate a new enigma. For instance, his ongoing survey of this bottlenose population reveals that 85 percent of their firstborn calves die. The cause is a focus of his research. Another puzzle: Over the years he has discovered that most male dolphins pair off with other males at an early age and bond for life.
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Swimming with “duskies” is a booming tourist industry in New Zealand; acrobatic, inquisitive, and easy to approach. | |
A mass stranding of 800 occurred off the coast of Argentina in the mid-1940s;slimmer and darker than the killer whale | |
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‘He just had this drive to do it, and even though I was a fairly cynical scientist then and told him there were no jobs, no money, no chance of much of a career, he wouldn’t quit.’
Dolphins are sociable creatures, and most of what is known about how they relate with one another has emerged because of Wells’s work. Mother and young form a bond that remains intimate for three to six years, often as part of a group of mothers and calves that may include three generations. Older sisters and aunts sometimes baby-sit while mothers take a break. Eventually mother and calf part, although many maintain a relationship for the rest of their lives. The young dolphin joins a juvenile group, and for the next dozen years they hang out, leap, bite, chase fish, and have sex, generally behaving like rambunctious teens. As they mature, most males split off into pairs and seek mates outside their community. Females, soon pregnant, find themselves part of a mothers-and-calves group.
Although parallels to human life are easily drawn, Wells is careful not to anthropomorphize dolphins. Still, language slips between brain and lips from time to time. “It’s really neat the way they are,” he might say, with a grin as boyishly enthusiastic as the one he must have worn at 15, when he moved with his parents to Sarasota Bay from landlocked Peoria. He arrived in 1969, “a bright kid who loved the ocean,” says Irvine. Before long, young Wells found his first job at the Mote Marine Laboratory, founded by pioneer shark researcher Eugenie Clark of the University of Maryland. “He really got into it,” Irvine remembers. “He was shy, and dedicated as all get-out.” Wells chopped fish, cleaned tanks, and helped with Irvine’s early dolphin research into whether dolphins could be trained to protect divers and shipwreck victims from sharks. (They couldn’t.)
One day, Irvine and marine mammal veterinarian Jesse White, who was known for having the same passionate interest in manatees that Wells later developed for dolphins, were talking shop. A question came up: Where do dolphins live? At the time, nobody knew. Irvine decided to find out. He hooked up with a commercial dolphin-catcher who netted the animals for aquariums. He freeze-branded them with liquid nitrogen—labeling them FB1, FB2, and so on—and began tracking their movements. Wells was allowed to tag along. Before long he met Granny, Melba, Hannah, Nat, and Nicklo, dolphins he would see hundreds of times over the decades. “I found out later he was cutting school to go on collecting trips,” Irvine says, laughing. “He just had this drive to do it, and even though I was a fairly cynical scientist then and told him there were no jobs, no money, no chance of much of a career, he wouldn’t quit.” Before long, Wells was cited as coauthor on a scientific paper by Irvine entitled “Results of Attempts to Tag Bottlenose Dolphins.”
When he first arrived at Mote, Wells was mostly interested in sharks. But as he worked with Irvine, he became a dolphin man. He grew fascinated by their combination of apparent friendliness and remoteness and how they used their intelligence in ways we didn’t understand. And he found that dolphin research had an advantage over shark research: “It’s easier to study something that comes to the surface every 28 seconds to breathe than something that never comes up at all.”
To find out more about Randall Wells's research, see the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program homepage: www.mote.org/~rwells
