{"id":3946,"date":"2017-10-04T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T16:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/?p=3946"},"modified":"2017-10-12T17:11:51","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T00:11:51","slug":"dolphin-baby-boom-to-follow-hurricanes-maria-and-irma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/dolphin-baby-boom-to-follow-hurricanes-maria-and-irma\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolphin Baby Boom To Follow Hurricanes Maria and Irma"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tragically\u00a0Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused incredible damage\u00a0throughout the Caribbean to both humans and property. But amid the horrors, there may be\u00a0one tiny bright spot to come: more baby bottlenose dolphins.\u00a0That’s based on\u00a0evidence from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which\u00a0suggests that dolphin reproduction\u00a0may boom\u00a0about\u00a0two years after a severe storm.<\/p>\n

There won’t be an increase right away, and scientists won’t know for a couple of years how well dolphins do in the wake of the back-to-back monster hurricanes.\u00a0Dolphins give birth earlier in the year, typically before the start of\u00a0autumn off the coast of Florida, so there aren’t any more calves to come this year. But there are two (depressing) ways that\u00a0a team of scientists\u00a0who study animal welfare think major storms could lead to a population boom in the year or two immediately after severe hurricane damage.<\/p>\n

First, storms kill\u00a0young calves: Dolphins typically\u00a0reproduce only every few years, spending the intervening time nursing. But\u00a0when a calf dies\u00a0the mother can breed again the next season. So if the storms wiped out a sizable percentage of calves born in the past couple of years, next season could see many more female dolphins breeding in the same year than usual\u2014and that would mean a\u00a0baby boom.<\/p>\n

The other possible factor is the hurricane’s destruction of fishing boats, which usually compete with dolphins for fish. That means that the dolphins that made it through the storm will likely have an easier time tracking down their meals. And that can be a sizable effect\u2014Hurricane Katrina nearly halved Mississippi’s commercial fishing haul\u00a0in the next year. Fewer boats mean less traffic to upset the dolphins, and fewer\u00a0fishing boats means more food for dolphins,\u00a0even despite the fish kills that are often caused by the large influxes of nutrients\u00a0hurricanes push off land and into the ocean.<\/p>\n

Before Hurricane Irma approached Cuba,\u00a0six captive dolphins drew headlines when they were evacuated to another aquarium\u00a0amid fears their enclosures wouldn’t hold up to the storm. The hurricanes’\u00a0impact on wild marine mammals\u00a0has also been a concern throughout the storms, with\u00a0even television reporters pitching in to rescue stranded dolphins.<\/p>\n

Generally conservationists are\u00a0not particularly concerned by bottlenose dolphin populations, thanks to their wide spread, and scientists estimate there are likely about 180,000 of the animals living in the Gulf of Mexico and off the east coast of North America.<\/p>\n

Source: goodnewsnetwork.org<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tragically\u00a0Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused incredible damage\u00a0throughout the Caribbean to both humans and property. But amid the horrors, there may be\u00a0one tiny bright spot to come: more baby bottlenose dolphins.\u00a0That’s based on\u00a0evidence from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which\u00a0suggests that dolphin reproduction\u00a0may boom\u00a0about\u00a0two years after a severe storm. There won’t be an increase right away,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":3949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[913,408,912,252],"class_list":["post-3946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-dolphin","tag-environment","tag-hurricane","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3946"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3951,"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3946\/revisions\/3951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youwealthrevolution.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}