Entering the World of Dolphins:

Research So Compelling That Andy Read Rarely Takes a Holiday

By Monte Basgall

Light to dark gray in color with prominent beaks that give them their name, Bottlenose dolphins captivate boaters and aquarium show audiences alike with their seeming playfulness and coziness with people, their dramatic displays of leaping gymnastics, the signs of sharpness emanating from their as-large-as-human brains, and their high pitched whistles and chirps that sound outwardly like communications.

The products of millions of years of evolution that returned them from land to sea, their marvelous adaptations tempt us to rank them in a special place in the animal world-in many ways more like us than others, though with far different skill sets than our own. The Navy has exploited these special talents by using dolphins as unparalleled acoustic detectors of submerged mines buried in sand, leaving us wondering in amazement what else they can do.

Scientists, working to separate the fact from the fanciful out of places like the Duke University Marine Laboratory in coastal Beaufort, N.C., are finding much left to learn about these 8-foot-long, 550-pound wonders. "You couldn't ask for a more interesting animal to study," said Andrew "Andy" Read, who leads dolphin work in and out of Beaufort for all of the year except the end of each summer. That's when he and some of his students do similar investigations of the related harbor porpoises in Canada's Bay of Fundy.

Heading one of the two largest labs within the Duke Marine Laboratory-its size a testimonial to marine mammals' popularity-the Canada-born researcher studies bottlenose dolphins from North Carolina to Florida's southern tip, teaches about them in a world-class conservation biology curriculum, and works with colleagues, fishermen and government officials to devise ways to better protect them. The work is so compelling that he and his wife, another dolphin researcher, find little time for vacations. "In some ways we don't want to take holidays because we enjoy what we do so much," exclaims Read, who last year was named Rachael Carson Assistant Professor of Marine Conservation Biology. "People are passionate about this, you know."

Bottlenosed dolphins are classified as among the "toothed whales." According to Read, the entire whale family of marine mammals that includes what we call whales, dolphins and porpoises left dry land about 55 million years ago, adapting in stages for life in the water starting with lifestyles perhaps similar to today's hippopotamus. Evolving in what was then the Tethys Sea (the earliest fossils were found in present-day Pakistan), they cast off their four legs in favor of flippers and tail flukes and developed many other departures from what we think normal for air-breathing mammals. Eventually, whales branched into the various species we know today with bottlenose dolphins separating about two million years ago.

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