Saving Abaco's Dolphins after Hurricane Dorian

The effects of extreme climatic events (ECEs) on ecosystems and wildlife populations are poorly understood because predicting the timing, intensity, and location of these rare events is too difficult. As such, when ECEs occur in areas where long-term monitoring of flora and fauna exists, it is important to document these events and their impacts. On September 1st, 2019, hurricane Dorian hit Marsh Harbour, Abaco, and surrounding communities as the strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the Atlantic. As some of the largest marine fauna and top predators in Abaco’s nearshore ecosystems, bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are expected to have been impacted both directly and indirectly by hurricane Dorian.

During a week of surveys for bottlenose dolphins in the Sea of Abaco in December 2024, we encountered dolphins four separate times, resulting in photographs of 18 individual dolphins. There were three mother-calf pairs and at least nine of the dolphins are individuals we have seen before and are in our catalogue, two of which were first documented in The Sea of Abaco thirty years ago! We also continue to retrieve and redeploy our acoustic recorders that are monitoring the ambient noise and detecting dolphin presence in the area.