Baby Dolphins are Here!

In just a few months, a dedicated team of professionals will have monitored the local bottlenose dolphin population for 20 years. Throughout these years, many changes have been documented, and the study team of the 10,000 Islands Dolphin Research Project on board the Dolphin Explorer is particularly excited each and every Fall because this is birthing season for our pregnant females – and 2025 has been especially exciting.

Not only have these females given birth, but their offspring are now fully grown and are giving birth. We now have 12 known grandmothers in our study area, but the grandmoms are not done as they continue to produce offspring as well! Let’s meet our 2025 moms and their new calves.

With so much time on the water, the team has recognized that birthing season around the north Marco Island water is primarily in the Fall, with more than 90% of the new calves first sighted between September and November. There are always exceptions and some births have been noted as early as July and as late as January, diverting just a bit from the normal cycle. Moms typically give birth every three to five years, one calf at a time.

Our first 2025 sighting of a new baby occurred on August 21st when mom Phineas produced her second known calf, which was named Augustus. This made Phineas’ mom, Patch’s Twin, a grandmom for the second time as well.

Next, on September 1st, Sintas was seen with a newborn named Midnight. Born in 2006, Sintas has been very productive and this is her fifth baby. Her oldest offspring, Fireball, can possibly give birth in the next few years. This would make Sintas a grandmom, and we know Sintas’ mom is Giza, giving us a fourth generation, our first known great grandma!

Our third new baby sighting was on September 30th, produced by Chip and named Pico. Already a grandmother of three, this is Chip’s sixth offspring. All of her young have done well and she was a great teacher to them! They are seen on a regular basis in our study area.

Number four was baby Ace with mom being Robin. This is Robin’s very first calf, making her mom Batman (yes, Batman’s a girl) a grandmother. Robin has a younger sibling named Gotham. Are you sensing a theme here? Ace was the name of Batman’s dog in the comic books! The first sighting of Ace was on October 1st.

On October 2, mom Zipper was documented with a new little one that was named Snap. This is Zipper’s second offspring, and her mom, Button, is a two-time grandmother now.

October 19th showed us one of our Gulf dolphins coming into shallow waters with a new baby. Mom is Open Gulf 2, OG2 for short, and the calf was named Emoji. We don’t know much about this lady since she resides primarily further away from shore, an area that we typically do not study very much, but it is not unusual for Gulf moms to bring a newborn to the shallow waters closer to shore to evade predators such as sharks while the little one learns to swim and breathe. OG2 will take Emoji back to their home when the calf is physically ready.

October 31st showed us another Gulf mom named Bert showing off her new baby in the same shallow area as OG2. The calf was named Ernie. Identifying dolphins by markings on their dorsal fin when they surface to breathe, Bert looked very much like a local youngster named Petosky. The team’s first thoughts were that Petosky was now a mom, but detailed study of the markings confirmed that Bert was surely the mother. Just like OG2, Bert will train Ernie to swim and socialize before returning offshore.

November 5th was interesting in that our third Gulf mom showed up close to the Marco shores with a new calf that was named Shaker. Very, very new to our study, these two will be documented while they are here, but are also expected to return to their home area as well.

Just a few days later, baby number nine was seen for the first time. Markings on the dorsal fin tells the team that this mom was definitely not OG2, Bert, or Salt, but the mom was new to our study and likely a resident of the Gulf or south Marco Island dolphin population. These two are unnamed as of this writing but will be researched in our extended database to see if we can find evidence that they have already been catalogued. Stay tuned on these two.

So, there are the nine moms and newborns documented from August 21st through November 14th when this article was written, but this is not the end of the story. We have several females that fit the profile to have a new calf this year but have not done so. We could still see a few more babies in the next six weeks, but time will tell.

Also, there could be a good reason why these moms will not give birth this year. Our dolphin society consists of 40+ adult females and 15 adult males. Of those 15 males, six have been the dominant ones when it comes to mating. Two of those males, Hatchet and Capri, have dominated the mating game for 20 years, if not more.

Just like some other societies of the animal kingdom, seasoned females that have had a calf or two or more will seek out those dominant males to mate with when they are ready to become pregnant. Hatchet has not been seen since early September of 2024, more than a year ago. A female pregnancy period is approximately one year, so if certain females were searching for Hatchet and did not find him, they may have skipped a year and waited until this Fall to find a new male partner.

The great thing about the dolphins and their habits is that time is on our side. Last Fall, we saw two of our dominant males, Bangle and Finch, following Robin for several weeks. This documentation helps to suggest that one of these two is the father of Ace, Robin’s calf born this year. This sighting history has held true on several occasions with our dolphin society. Again, time is our friend, and it will help verify much of the study habits the team is witnessing! Stay tuned!