Working with Bottlenose Dolphons as a NOAA Intern
By Candice Rivera ( ‘06)

This summer I interned at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research lab in Charleston, South Carolina. I worked as the vet tech assistant for the ongoing Health and Environmental Research Assessment (HERA) project on bottlenose dolphin where I provided support for the two live animal captures undertaken each summer in the Indian River Lagoon, Florida and Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

The HERA project’s original focus was to determine if the bacteria E.coli was present in bottlenose populations as a result of increased urbanization and the consequent increased pollution.

Live captures provide information for researchers working on many different long-term projects stemming from the original project. There are population studies and assessments of the marine environment, which compare dolphin populations as well as the level of contaminants and disease in each respective environment. Other research projects focus on specific diseases and look for data to develop cures for identified dolphin pathogens, as well as to discover their root cause (usually a polluted environment.) One study looked at the antibiotic resistance of bacteria found on the dolphin. As I learned this summer, dolphins carry strains of bacteria resistant to some antibiotics due to improper disposal of the drugs into the water system. Humans are careless in their use of the environment as a dispose-all, but in the end, it is the animals who have to pay for our abuse of this precious resource.