News from the field: UAE dolphins get a name!

After a slow and troubled start, we are finally full on in the field work surveying the coastal waters in front of Dubai from the Marittime City to Palm Jebel Ali, and we have to admit that either we are pretty lucky or dolphins like these waters! Out of 7 outings we spotted dolphins 6 times, including bottlenose dolphins, humpback dolphins and also finless porpoise!! Finless porpoise is indeed an unexpected surprise: we had already two sightings! This species is renown to occur in these waters but it also renown to be quite rare and very shy. There is very little information on wild finless porpoises world wide and the only data available based on by-catch and strandings sadly show a drastic decline throughout their range.

The survey is conducted following predetermined transects that ensu

Taindividuals1TAindividuals2re an homogeneous coverage of the whole designated area and once dolphins are sighted we take pictures of all the individuals present in the group. We are now starting to create a catalo

gue of fins of the individuals of bottlenose and humpback dolphins that we are able to identified and we already have some resightings of individuals in both species.

These are some of the individuals that received a name either from the people that kindly submitted the sighting with the first picture that allowed us to iden

tified the individual, or our little winners of our “Draw a dolphin”

competition.

UAEDP-TaCatalogue3

Check this space for the net exciting news from the field and:

PLEASE REPORT YOUR SIGHTING and pictures to help us following these animals!

Thank you to Dubai Municipality to grant us with the permit to survey the Dubai coastal waters and our great sponsor Duretti Boat Manufacturing, Dubai Marina Yacht Club, ITP publishing, an anonymus sponsor and all the volunteers.