Pacific white-sided dolphin. Photo courtesy of Erin Ashe
Tuesday, Feb. 12 at 7 p.m. at Emmanuel Parish Hall in Eastsound
Pacific White-Sided Dolphins, also known as “Lags,” a shortened form of their scientific name Lagenorhynchus obliquidens, are offshore schooling dolphins that are becoming more common in the Salish Sea.
They’re fast, they jump and leap from the water, and like most cetaceans, and they have amazingly large brains. They’re also fun to watch, as you can see in a recent home-video of the several hundred that recently visited Eastsound: (https://www.seadocsociety.org/dolphins-eastsound).
Erin Ashe, a Ph.D student at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, has had a SeaDoc-funded project to study Lags in the Salish Sea and the Broughton Archipelago for the past several years. Like killer whales, Pacific White-Sided Dolphins can be individually identified and she has developed a photo-identification database to track individuals and study their movements, life history, and population status.
Although not seen in the Salish Sea, in some areas Pacific White-Sided Dolphins can congregate in groups as large as 1,000 animals. They enjoy bow-riding the wakes of boats, and even will ride the wakes of large whales. They can even been seen swimming with or harassing fish-eating Northern and Southern resident killer whales, even though transient killer whales prey upon them (for a video of this see: oceansinitiative.org/dolphins). Come learn more about these fascinating animals and the cutting-edge research that is helping us better understanding their population dynamics.
The 2012/13 Marine Science Lecture Series is designed to inspire the general public and to highlight the amazing fish and wildlife of our region. Lectures are free.
The Lecture Series is presented by program partners The SeaDoc Society and YMCA Camp Orkila. It has been made possible through generous sponsorship by Tom Averna (Deer Harbor Charters), Barbara Bentley and Glenn Prestwich, Barbara Brown, Audrey and Dean Stupke and West Sound Marina. For more information visit seadocsociety.org.
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