Kim Taylor, the former chair of the Fairfield Harbor Management Commission says she’s never seen a bottlenose dolphin, until recently when her family saw a group of them, known as a pod, off the coast of Fairfield earlier this month.
“In all our years being out there, we had never seen them before,” Taylor said.
Taylor is in increasingly rare company; over the past couple of years more dolphins have been spotted on Long Island Sound.
Experts and environmentalists from Fairfield University, Stony Brook University, UConn and Save the Sound, an environmental conservation group, confirmed the animals Taylor’s family recently saw were dolphins.
The experts point to a number of factors explaining why dolphins are appearing off Connecticut's so called gold coast in greater numbers.
Taylor credited Long Island Sound restoration efforts for the increase in dolphin sightings.
Taylor said her family sailed off the coast where they saw the dolphins diving into the water and coming back up.
“If it had been kids, I would have said they were frolicking,” Taylor said. It was wonderful.”
Tyler Griffin, an assistant professor of biology at Fairfield University, said it can partly explain why more people are seeing dolphins.
Griffin explained the Long Island Sound’s ecosystem is now able to better sustain diverse marine life compared to previous decades which makes the sound more attractive to dolphins.
“These animals are really, really smart, and they basically go where there's food,” Griffin said. “And it's not uncommon to see pods of these animals follow schools of fish into enclosed basins or estuaries, including Long Island Sound.”
Griffin said part of the reason why that is happening is a result of sustained environmental restoration efforts over the decades. Lower pollution and higher water quality levels, Griffin said, have led to higher fish populations in the area.
But it’s not just cleaner waters bringing more dolphins into the sound.
Lesley Thorne is an associate professor and associate dean of research at The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York.
Thorne concluded the animals described by Taylor were bottlenose dolphins, based on their snouts and the shape of their fins. Thorne said the dolphins are increasingly showing up to the region as a result of rising water temperatures.
Harbor Porpoises, Thorne said, used to be more common.
“In the past, we used to see more cool water species, but as waters have warmed, we're seeing more warm water species such as bottlenose dolphins”, Thorne said. “So there's been an increase in observations of bottlenose dolphins. It's been very, very evident over the last 20 years or so, more and more bottlenose dolphins have (occurred) in waters of New York.”
Thorne said climate change has impacted the sound, but said it's still more common to see the dolphins on the south shore of Long Island and it's comparatively less common in the sound off the Connecticut coast.
The changing temperatures have impacted other wildlife in the oceans, according to Thorne.
“This is something we're trying to better understand,” Thorne said. “What does that mean for the food web, for those relationships between predators and prey?”
Advocates like Bill Lucey, at Save the Sound say the animals are a good sign.
Lucey works as a soundkeeper, patrolling the sound for pollution and conducting research. He says over the years more people are seeing dolphins, and other animals like seals in the sound.
Lucey said more marine mammal sightings could attract people to the sound.
“We're starting to see some real indications of healthy productivity in Long Island Sound due to the actions of all these people trying to heal it,” Lucey said.
