Watershed Moments: Chesapeake DolphinWatch, Dolphins in the Chesapeake Bay
The Appalachian Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) will host Dr. Helen Bailey for an engaging talk on the DolphinWatch project. This event, part of the Lab’s Watershed Moments Community Learning Series, will take place on Thursday, May 13, at 6:30pm on Zoom. Registration for the event is required. Once registered, attendees will receive Zoom access information via email.
Bailey, a Research Associate Professor with UMCES, is based at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland. In 2017, Bailey founded the Chesapeake DolphinWatch project to learn more about bottlenose dolphins in the Chesapeake Bay. As an important feature of the project, volunteers, also known as citizen scientists, report their dolphin sightings through the Chesapeake DolphinWatch mobile app and website. These reported sightings help Bailey and her team identify the best locations in the Bay to set up underwater microphones to record dolphins communicating, allowing researchers to learn more about how and where the dolphins find food and navigate the Bay. To date, the project team has received over 1,000 sighting reports per year, which have greatly improved our understanding about this protected species in the Bay.
