The Effects Human Presence has on Dolphins within a Natural Lagoon Enclosure in Managed Care

Authors

• Mario Martinez, St. Mary's University
• Winter Saldaña, St. Mary's University

Files

Contributor

Hill, Heather (Faculty Mentor); Dudzinski, Kathleen (Faculty Mentor); Karlin, Melissa (Faculty Mentor); Dolphin Communication Project, Port Saint Lucie, FL

Digital Publisher

Digital Commons at St. Mary's

Publication Date

Spring 2026

Keywords

Animal-human interactions, Natural Lagoons, Animal sciences

Description

● Previous research looked into the overall behavior of dolphins in managed care using observations of location (Dudzinski & Hill, 2025).

● This study provides opportunities to investigate the effects of human presence on dolphin activity and space use (Lauderdale et al., 2022; Trone et al., 2005).

● Purpose - To determine if human presence affects dolphin behavior / spatial use of natural lagoon.

● H1: Dolphin clustering will be seen in the most Northern part of the lagoon and area associated with humans consistently (Melillo et al., 2009).

● H2: Higher activity levels will be observed during the “during” sessions with a swimming researcher (Trone et al., 2005).

Format

PDF

Size

1 poster

City

San Antonio, Texas

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.