Grand old lady of the sea

Dolphins and Anna Maria Island go together like beer and football. They are always to be seen frolicking around in the waters surrounding our beautiful island.
Scientists are also very interested in them and a number have been tagged over the years to track their movements and try to learn a little bit more about them.
And according to a recent story in Naples News, one of them provided almost 40 years of help with their research before it washed up on a shore near to Anna Maria Island.
It says: 'A female wild dolphin monitored for 38 years by the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program based at Mote Marine Laboratory died May 22, leaving behind two documented generations of offspring to continue her legacy.
Waterfront residents found the 46-year-old dolphin — known as "FB5" by program scientists — on a sandbar near Longboat Key. Mote staff recovered the dolphin, which had succumbed to illnesses and injuries that plagued her for months.
A necropsy, or animal autopsy, showed that FB5 had lost more than 100 pounds since her health was last assessed in 2001. She had developed non-healing skin lesions and suffered from organ failure, shark bites and a stingray barb in her lung. Examining her made for a bittersweet evening.
"We will all miss this old girl," said Dr. Randall Wells, Senior Scientist and manager of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, a partnership between the Chicago Zoological Society and Mote and the world's longest-running study of a wild dolphin population.
In March 1971, Wells and his colleagues tagged FB5 — in fact, she was one of the first dolphins tagged for identification by the group, which began monitoring Sarasota Bay's dolphins in 1970. Data gathered by Program researchers serves to inform marine mammal policy, research, conservation and education. By studying five generations of Sarasota Bay's 160 or so year-round resident dolphins — including FB5's calves and grandcalves — Program scientists continue nearly four decades of learning about these amazing marine mammals.'
You can learn more about the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program at www.mote.org
Read the whole article here