Tuesday Morning Goat Rodeo

[gks0409]

I think you were being pretty polite my reponse would have been much different.

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[John]

They would have a got a very different retort from me, I'd have also taken down boat numbers and reported them for unsafe operations of a motorized vessel.

[DaveR]

Pretty sure I would have been hunting up bail money.

[mauso1]

I would have told them to pound something..

[TRKpoker]

That was my first thought Dave.....

[Rik]

I've read all this with wondering what the other side of the story would be. My Mother lives down the street from Dr. Randy Wells and I had a conversation with him about this incident. He was very aware of Manning being there, remembered it well. Of course, he is the top dog in that whole process so his concerns were more about the dolphins and his team members then 'the guy in the kayak'.

There are 85 people and 10 boats involved in this study. It is no small undertaking to round up, capture and perform the necessary tests safely for both the dolphins and the people involved. You take the dolphins when you can get them and Manning just happened to be in the same place.

While I likely would not be very happy if it had happened around me, I do see the value in what they are doing. Their 'on the water public relations' could probably use some tweaking. Had someone gone over to Manning very early in the whole process and apologized nicely while explaining what was going on, I suspect that he'd not have had his nose so far out of joint. That super authoritative attitude filled with demands doesn't do them any favors.

I pointed out this thread to Dr. Wells so I suspect he'll read it at some point. If you want to learn a bit more about them, go to this site - SARASOTA DOLPHIN RESEARCH PROGRAM

[shamus]

I would imagine that the sandbar was in part of their plans for capturing the dolphins. "Plans" being a very fluid notion when trying to capture Dolphins. Now imagine if a little diplomacy was involved. "Excuse me sir, Were doing a reaearch study and are attempting to capture a dolphin. It would really help us if you would move your kayak to the other side of the sand bar, Thank you"
This entire thread would being going in an entirely different direction.

[Rik]

Yep. I too think that sand flat was important to their capture plans. A simple "we're really sorry for blowing out your fishing spot but here's what we're doing....." followed by "would you like a couple free tickets to Mote Marine?" would have changed to whole tone.

[Norm]

I'm in total agreement with Steve....did I just say that I don't think you were a dick and without question they could have handled that with a little more diplomacy and I don't for the life of me see how your presence had any effect whatsoever. I would have politely told the guy to shove off....not really sure how polite I would have been

[Tide1on]

I pointed out this thread to Dr. Wells so I suspect he'll read it at some point.

That's when the fight started!

[Manning]

As I explained in my original post I was slightly pre-loaded with with a bad attitude when the events took place last week. In retrospect I may have overreacted to them being short with me. Clearly things were happening fast and I can imagine they were under a lot of pressure. Community relation had to be pretty low on their priority list.

I have continued to do some research on their study. I found a very detailed work plan document that completely explains the purpose of the study and the methodology to be followed which matched perfectly with what I witnessed. That left my with just one nagging question. Why had they become so excited and upset by my taking pictures and video. So I went to the NOAA Gulf Spill Restoration website (http://www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov/) and went to the "contact us" section. None of the listings seemed to fit the situation so I called the number listed for the media contact. They listened to my story and the questions I had and said that they would have someone get back to me. Less than 1 hour later I received a call from a NOAA representative who listened very patiently to my whole story. He apologized if the research team had not been the most polite but expressed that they are under a lot of pressure during these events. He said that there is in fact a prohibition against having any of the dolphin study photographed or videoed. He said the sole reason for this is in the best interests of the dolphins. During these capture and study events there is lots going on and they don't want any of the team members distracted or in any way changing their actions because there is a camera present. Not sure I explained this well here, but we spent nearly a half hour on the phone and I feel very comfortable with the explanation I was given.

One funny post script to all this is the fact that I have had an incredibly strong, life long interest in bottlenose dolphins. I actually wrote my high school senior term paper on dolphins and and that was 48 years ago.

[rwells]

As the director of the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, I would like to thank Rik and Manning for continuing the dialog about our dolphin health assessment project, and sharing their findings. This project, conducted under a NOAA scientific research permit, is part of a larger project by the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, investigating the potential impacts of the Deep Water Horizon oil spill on wildlife in the northern Gulf of Mexico. One of our parts of the puzzle involves providing data from an un-oiled reference population of dolphins for comparison. For more information on the project itself, please visit our website: http://www.sarasotadolphin.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. This will also lead you to several links at NOAA about their broader investigation.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize again to Manning for how our group interacted with him at the capture-release site. We had been following this group of 4 dolphins, all long-term residents of Sarasota Bay, from the vicinity of the Longboat Key Marina, and this was the first time they had entered waters shallow enough for us to safely capture and work with them. Events proceeded quickly to take advantage of the very brief time that they would be in these shallows, with each of the boats performing their assigned roles (while also considering the safety of other vessels in the area). Once the net goes out to encircle the animals, there is a high level of excitement and focus on the well-being of the dolphins and team, until we secure the dolphins and make sure they and our team members are safe. You all are correct – interactions with the public were not the first thing on our minds, but that is not a good excuse for not providing you with a polite and sufficiently informative explanation of what we were doing. Please accept my profuse apology, and know that your incident has led to changes in procedures for interacting with the public for the next stages of the project, in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Manning – I would like to invite you to come to our office at Mote to learn more about our long-term dolphin research program (and to see that our team normally behaves very differently under less stressful conditions). Please give me a call at your convenience.

I certainly understand your life-long interest in bottlenose dolphins – I started working with Sarasota Bay’s dolphins when I was a senior at Riverview High School back in 1970. One of the dolphins you saw us with was born that year.

[Manning]

For any of you that have been following this thread. The post just prior to this one was written by Dr. Wells who I had mentioned I talked to in a prior post. I really appreciate his posting here and absolutely plan on taking him up on his offer to visit his office and learn more about the research.