Dolphin Study’s Sponsors Count on Amateurs’ Help
SAVANNAH, Ga. — More than 200 volunteer amateur scientists gathered in this Atlantic coastal town Saturday to start a 10-year study aimed at discovering how many bottlenose dolphins live along the Georgia coast.
The volunteers are part of a network of ordinary people from as far away as Massachusetts who signed up for a program that sponsors believe is the first attempt to use amateurs in a long-range ocean research project.
Alhough thousands of American sightseers have observed whales and dolphins, the census is the first of its kind, said Charles Potter, collection manager for marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution and chairman of the project’s board of scientific advisers.
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