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Research News
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DRI Researchers Lead the World We are delighted to announce that Kate Charlton-Robb received the Award for Best Student Presentation at the Biennial Conference of the Society for Marine Mammalogy in Quebec, October, 2009. Four of our team from Monash University and DRI presented poster papers. This is a great achievment and recognition of the work of our dedicated team.
Read Media Release - DRI Researchers Lead the world at Quebec Conference...(pdf 79kb)
Concerns over Dolphin Pox in the Gippsland Lakes
Analysis of the 2,000 images from our research team's Photo-ID survey of the Gippsland Lakes in July, 2009, showed dolphins with some skin lesions, generally small blister-like sores only millimetres across.
We were very concerned because at the end of 2007, one-third of the animals in the Lakes were infected, some with ugly secondary infections.
In June 2010, the DRI research team spent four full days observing and photographing the resident dolphins with the aim of identifying individuals and recording any lesions present.
We encountered a number of pods each day; pods consisting of one to six dolphins or much larger feeding pods of 30 - 50+ animals. At least two small calves and a number of sub-adults were seen. Individual dolphins were regularly observed leaping and spy-hopping, all spectacular surface active behaviours.
We took nearly 3000 images that are now being analysed. It appears that some of the dolphins have the spots indicative of dolphin pox. Kate Charlton-Robb(see above) will be comparing these images with ones taken previously when the dolphins were heavily covered with lesions.
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