As part of the International Day of the Oceans, celebrated last Friday June 8th, we received a cute and peculiar story about Corazón, a beautiful bottlenose dolphin, who loves visiting the warm coasts of Bayahibe, only 30 minutes away from Casa de Campo and Samaná, located on the North East coast of the Dominican Republic, and who with his frequent appearances near Bayahibe has been helping scientists develop a better understanding of the species.
Since the year 2005, the Fundación Dominicana de Estudios Marinos (The Dominican Foundation for Marine Research), otherwise known as FUNDEMAR, has been dedicated to researching and investigating bottlenose dolphins living in the Easter region of the Dominican Republic.
The dolphins swimming about in the “Parque Nacional del Este” area
In recent years, FUNDEMAR has concluded that the bottlenose dolphins of the Bayahibe/Saona area, normally travel in 5 distinct social groups (“pods”), who typically stay together for a long period of time. However, although most of the groups tend to live and circulate in the zone of Bayahibe (with some living between the Chavón river and Saona)…… there are others which dissappear for months or even years!
So it was obvious that these dolphins were travellers….. but the question was – where did they go and what did they do when they were not in Bayahibe?
Recently, this magnificient dolphin Corazón answered these questions:
Corazón was observed on May 8th of 2007 in Bayahibe for the first time and wasn’t seen nearby until June 8th 2010. BUT, it was on February 25th of this year (2012) when cute Corazón was seen swimming about in Samaná bay – a place visited by the Humpback whales every year from mid-January through to the end of March – (click here to read more!!)
But how do we know this is Corazón?
The naming of Corazón
A curious fact: Dolphins are usually identified by their huge dorsal fin – similar to finger prints in humans.
In the middle of an educational speech given by FUNDEMAR in the Bayahibe school, a brilliant opportunity in which children learnt how to identify dolphins, they managed to see a peculiar hole on this dolphin’s dorsal fin, a hole that had looked just like a “corazón” (a heart)! So in the middle of their practice and with the task of assigning a name to the different dolphins studied that day, the 8th grade group at the Sagrado Corazón de Jesús School in Bayahibe, who were studying him, came up with “Corazón” – a beautiful name!
“After analyzing the situation we can finish with one of Isaac Newton’s phrases: What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean. We can confirm that all of these investigations help us discover a little more about our seas and oceans.”
— FUNDEMAR
Happy International Day of the Oceans – let it be an everyday-celebration showed with respect to our environment, nature, our animals and oceans!
Photos were taken at the Parque Nacional del Este and were contributed by Rita Sellares – thank you Rita!
About FUNDEMAR
FUNDEMAR is an organisation dedicated to the promote, advise, plan and maintain sustainable use of the marine ecosystem and its resources through research, education and conservation policies. It has a technical team based working on science, vocation and efficiency, who develop projects with the misson of accomplishing the organisation’s objectives.
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