Listening in on dolphins reveals acoustic clues to food and friendship

Researchers listening to dolphin soundscapes along Florida’s Atlantic coast have found acoustic patterns that may indicate where pods socialize and hunt. A study by Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, published in PeerJ, used an autonomous wave glider with an underwater recorder to monitor the East Florida Shelf for two months. The device captured nearly 62 hours of underwater audio and detected dolphins in more than 1,600 recordings. By comparing whistle and echolocation activity against environmental variables—depth, temperature, salinity, currents, chlorophyll-a, biological productivity and ship noise—the team found whistles were more common in nearshore zones, while echolocation clicks clustered from Melbourne toward Ponce Inlet and offshore near Long John Reef.