Meet our Local Dolphins – Avery and Family

Dolphin Explorer LLC is the proprietor of the 10,000 Islands Dolphin Study Program and the team has been monitoring the travel range, social behavior, abundance, genealogy, well-being and overall health of the local bottlenose dolphin population since 2006. The study continues…

Welcome to our spring and summer series of articles that will introduce you to many of the individual bottlenose dolphins that the survey team on board the Dolphin Explorer has come to know over the last sixteen years. These area residents are non-migratory, which means they stay here all year long and the team gets to know many of them quite well. We’ve watched females give birth to sons and daughters and now some of those young ladies are having offspring of their own.

That’s right…. three generations are being observed around Marco Island and that means we have several grandmothers in the water! Imagine that...finding a grandmother on Marco Island!!! There are at least five grandmoms that we know of and the skills passed onto their daughters are the same skills being passed to the grandbabies by their moms. These findings are amazing!

Over the next several months the team will introduce you to many of our local stars so that you, too, can get to know them. They are seen on a regular basis and are here all year long. Today, let’s meet adult female Avery and her family.

Avery is a very productive female and has given birth to at least seven offspring since our study began in 2006. She was a fully mature adult when we first met her, and she gave birth to a calf that year that was named Lucky Charm. We do not know how many offspring Avery produced prior to 2006 since we were not conducting an area study at that time.

Typically, a calf will stay with a mother for three or four years and this was the case with Lucky Charm. She was raised primarily to the west of the Jolley Bridge, around the bird rookery and surrounding islands. She fed from her mother’s milk for approximately two years but began catching fish within the first year of life. At age two, Lucky Charms mom, Avery, became pregnant. With a gestation period of one year, this youngster had that amount of time to fine tune that fishing skill before going out on its own at age three, when Avery had another calf. Lucky Charm is still seen feeding today in the same areas that Avery taught her to catch her prey. Mom taught this youngster well and it will turn sixteen years old this fall.

In 2009 Avery gave birth to a calf named Aubrey. The same pattern continued with this new youngster as it did with the previous one. Aubrey was by Avery’s side learning to feed right where the older sibling did and, like clockwork, Aubrey left mom when Avery produced a new calf in 2012 that was named Flash.

Unfortunately, Flash was only seen for a short while before disappearing from view. There are predators in the waters and not all young of year (YOY) survive. But a resilient Avery became pregnant again shortly after Flash was gone and gave birth in the fall of 2013 to Anji. This would be Avery’s fourth known offspring to the study team.

Just like Lucky Charm and Aubrey, you can guess where Anji was taught to feed. Anji turns nine years old this fall and is still seen feeding right where mom taught it. Can you guess what happened in 2016? Yep, Avery gave birth to another calf and this one was named 360. Do you want to guess where 360 fed and what happened in 2019?

You’ve got it! The team saw 360 leave Avery’s side in late summer of 2019 and the girth on Avery’s body indicated that she might be pregnant. We watched her carefully that fall but no new calf was seen. She was noticeably thinner and the conclusion by staff was that she may have had a calf that was never sighted.

Just as was the case with Flash, Avery became pregnant in 2019, giving birth to Stefin twelve months later. Now, Stefin is an anomaly. While all of Avery’s other living offspring stayed with her for three years, Stefin, a young male, left her side at nine months old. The team felt certain that Stefin had met his fate when he was not sighted with mom on several occasions. But then, he was back by Avery’s side, then gone again and returning periodically to be seen with Avery. Stefin has been seen recently on his own, as well as with mom.

This creates an interesting scenario. If Stefin is not nursing from mom’s milk, could Avery possibly be pregnant at this time, potentially producing a new calf this fall? Only time will tell and 2022 will be an interesting time for the team.

So, thank you, Avery, for contributing to the dolphin society here and to our research. In addition to this resilient mom, we see her offspring Lucky Charm, Aubrey, Anji, 360 and Stefin on a regular basis.

Stay tuned for the next chapter and meet our grandmother Sparky in the article of this series! Have fun out there!

Bob is the lead naturalist for the dolphin study team on board the Dolphin Explorer. He is a two-time award-winning columnist for Coastal Breeze News, an author of two books and a regular speaker at south Florida venues. Bob loves his wife very much!