August 18, 2017 — Earlier this summer, we started hearing reports of dolphins in the Chesapeake Bay. Some thought it was unusual, others said it was no big deal. So Joel McCord went searching for them for Chesapeake: A Journalism Collaborative.
Dr. Helen Bailey, who did her PhD work on bottle nose dolphins, says she heard reports of occasional sightings of the marine mammals when she came to work as an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science in Solomons.
But then the underwater microphones the lab was experimenting with began picking up the tell-tale squeaks and clicks of dolphins foraging in the Chesapeake and its tributaries. Now, the scientists are finding out the dolphins are pretty regular visitors to the bay.
“We were discovering that we were actually detecting dolphins quite frequently during June, July and August,” she said. “And so then put another hydrophone in the Potomac River and there we were detecting dolphins every day.”
She says they’ve been detected throughout the bay and many of its tributaries. But what drew them into the Bay?
“We think that they’re following the prey into the bay,” Bailey says. “And getting a better understanding of how that is working is really important to understanding the eco system.”