The Sarasota bottlenose dolphin community as a proving ground for delphinid tagging technology

A 55+ year-long study of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) residing in Sarasota Bay on the west coast of Florida, USA, has supported the evolution of tags that address an expanding array of scientific questions while improving the welfare of tagged animals. Most individual dolphins from this community are identifiable from dorsal fin marks or freeze branding and are regularly resighted, which facilitates our ability to monitor effects of tagging in these wild animals. Recurring catch-and-release health assessments, where dolphins are temporarily held in net corrals in shallow water for veterinary health assessments, have provided a rich opportunity for hands-on attachment of tags as well as follow-up observations to document the effects of tagging. Capabilities developed by the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program (SDRP) to attach tags under controlled conditions, to follow, resight, and photograph animals regularly, and to recatch animals for assessing and mitigating effects of tagging have provided a critical test bed for the development and field validation of a long series of tags and for ground-truthing tag data. These tags range from simple plastic tags that support visual identification of individuals, to radio and satellite telemetry tags that track animal movements, to biologgers that record sound, movement and physiological variables. SDRP has been involved with many of the progressive technological developments that since the 1970s have transformed cetacean tagging technology and led to smaller, lighter, more hydrodynamic, and less invasive tags, with greater battery life and memory capacity, and with continuously evolving sensor suites.