- April 25, 2024
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Marine animals have a large amount of supporters at the northeastern edge of Flagler County. One of those support centers, which is generating news in the scientific world, is the Georgia Aquarium Conservation Field Station.
Manned by two employees, George Biedenbach, director, and Matthew Denny, field coordinator, and about 21 volunteers, the field station acts as a three-pronged support system for dolphins and whales.
Those three areas are stranding, identification and outreach.
The stranding prong can be broken down even further into three types of responses required by the scientists. The first response is dead response. History shows that about 75% of marine animals — the field station works with whales and dolphins — that strand themselves are already dead. According to Biedenbach, of the remaining numbers, about 75% are in such bad shape that they either die of natural causes or are euthanized because of a joint decision made to put the needs of the animal first. This all happens within the first 24 hours.
“An important part of our job, which is sometimes hard to talk about or for some people hard to think about, is kind of like a medical examiner,” Biedenbach said.
From there, the scientists conduct a necropsy, or an animal autopsy, if the animal is fresh enough.
“Over the years as you gather that data together, it can be very eye opening, especially for the health of the sea and the estuary — it’s very important,” Biedenbach said.
Over the last three years, 19 full cases have been reported with 17 causes of death found. This data and the findings the field station has collected from its research will soon be shared with the scientific community when published in the Journal of Florida Scientists.
“A lot of these cases tend to correlate with some of the other areas in the region,” Biedenbach said. “These animals seem to be immune compromised.”
The second tier to the stranding system is live response or transport of animals to a hospital pool. Live response includes entanglements, which are joint efforts between agencies. Entanglements are on the rise all over Florida.
“We’re seeing a lot of dolphins, especially dolphin calves, getting tangled in fishing line and fishing nets,” Denny said. “Small claves like to play with discarded fishing line floating in the water and they get wrapped up in it. Within a matter of a few days trying to get out of it, the line can get tighter and it will sever pecks and brittle the animals.”
Responding to entanglements requires a lot of planning and preparation, including permission from National Marine Fisheries. Gathering the proper number of boats and personnel takes at least a few days to mobilize.
The staff at the Flagler field station was preparing to deploy to assist with the rescue of a dolphin calf trapped in a crab pot down south.
Rehab and release will eventually be the third tier to the stranding system.
“It is our ultimate goal here at the field station to have a hospital pool for small whales and dolphins,” Biedenbach said. “We have the expertise and the location. There is still a need for a hospital pool for rehabilitation cases in this part of the state. Otherwise, the closest facility that would temporarily house animals is Sea World (in Orlando).”
Although the center is in the planning stages to move forward with those plans, there are still several permitting requirements needed. One major preparation would be to have a completely separate pool from the Marineland attraction.
“They have a collection of healthy animals there, and you don’t want to be intermingling sick animals that we’re picking up off the beach and throwing them in with the healthy ones,” Denny said. “It would have to be a really isolated system.”
The second prong to the field station is photographic identification of the dolphins. Once a week, with the assistance of a telephoto lens and digital SLR, the crew of the field station embarks on one of three survey routs on the Intracoastal Waterway in search of dolphins. They also have an ocean route that stretches out one kilometer.
“The idea is to try to catch (the dolphins) perpendicular to get a clear image of their dorsal fin,” said Denny, who operates the camera. “Fifty percent of dolphins in this area have distinct dorsal fins. If you get a high resolution image you can identify them and then keep tabs, answer basic population questions such as the abundance, usage of environment and migratory patterns.”
The final prong: outreach. The conservation outreach initiative targets second- and fifth-grade students in Flagler County. The presentation coincides with curriculum and meets Sunshine State Standards.
“We are educating (students) on how unique this area is and inspiring them and making them realize that we have an impact on the environment we all depend on and what we can do to protect it,” Denny said of the second-grade presentation.
The fifth-grade presentation expands to teaching the anatomy of the dolphin and also employs the students in the identification process by matching dorsal fins. To date, the outreach program has reached 4,000 students at Rymfire, Old Kings and Bunnell elementary schools. Eventually, the goal is to reach all of Flagler County's elementary schools.
“We have to do it slow and grassroots because we don’t have a lot of resources,” Denny said.
Flagler County has 20 miles of coastline, doubled with the Intracoastal on the backside. And the team at the Georgia Aquarium Conservation Field Station is studying the marine life who call that stretch home, identifying them, saving them from trouble and determining what makes them sick.
“We’re very fortunate to be able to do this, simply because there are a lot of priorities on people’s plates and oddly enough, with this presidential election, it doesn’t seem that the environment is real high,” Biedenbach said. “So I think it’s important that we’re still doing the job, contributing to the scientific community and gaining knowledge all the time.”
