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Friday, March 29, 2024

N.C. dolphin specialist educates Wrightsville Beach community

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By Elly Colwell

Intern

Keith Rittmaster told tales of death, birth, companionship and survival during a presentation on North Carolina’s dolphin population at the Blockade Runner Beach Resort on Tuesday evening.

Rittmaster, the natural science curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort and director of the Cape Lookout Studies Program, spoke about the biology, mating rituals, migration patterns, social characteristics and history of humans’ interactions with the bottlenose dolphin, the most common of the 12 dolphin species found off the North Carolina coast.

Much of Rittmaster’s research deals with tracking the animals through photo-identification. Each dolphin has notches on its dorsal fin that function in a way similar to a human fingerprint. Identifying dolphins in this way allows researchers to track the animals without physically capturing and marking them.

As a result of the data collected, Rittmaster and his team have made interesting discoveries. One of the most noteworthy is the tale of two male dolphins that appear to be lifelong companions. The dolphins, Onion and Butterfly, were first photographed together in 1989, again in 1992, and yet again in 2011. In each of the recorded sightings, the two animals are pictured swimming immediately beside each other.

“The most endearing relationship in dolphin society is between adult males,” Rittmaster said. He explained it is normal for male dolphins to move in pairs or small groups for years, or even for decades, as seen with Onion and Butterfly.

Rittmaster’s presentation was not all focused on endearing stories of the water mammals’ social interactions. He also told gruesome stories of North Carolina fishermen that hunted the dolphins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for their jaw oil, which was used as a lubricant for firearms and watches. The industry, mislabeled as the “porpoise fishery,” overtook the population.

“I feel pretty confident that the population has not yet recovered,” Rittmaster said.

Although the industry devoted to hunting the animals ended by 1929, humans continue to impact dolphins in adverse ways. Today, they are being wiped out by another killer: marine debris.

Through necropsy, Rittmaster said his colleagues have found dolphins’ stomachs containing candy wrappers, camera lens caps, plastic and fishing lines.

“This stuff can become lethal to protected wildlife,” Rittmaster said.

Fishing nets trap the animals as well, leading to an often prolonged death. Rittmaster presented photographs of a dolphin who died of starvation after a gill net entangled its head. He predicted the dolphin spent one year of its short one and one-half-year life suffering in the gill net.

“Every dolphin I have seen entangled in a net has been young, and as they grow, the nets just get tighter and tighter around their necks,” Rittmaster said. “It’s a big problem in North Carolina, and I feel confident it is getting worse.”

Rittmaster and his team started a monofilament recycling and recovery program that educates and encourages people to recycle their fishing lines to keep them out of the ocean.

The researcher encouraged the audience to spread the knowledge about protecting North Carolina’s dolphins, and asked people to sign up for the Protect Wild Dolphins North Carolina license plate that annually raises $10,000-$12,000 for his research fund.

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