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boat from the NOAA National Marine Fisheries program in Beaufort will soon be plying the waters of the Gulf of Mexico counting dolphins in the wake of BP’s oil disaster. That dolphin head count will later help NOAA track the effect that the oil gushing from the BP well is having on the mammals in the Gulf and its estuaries.

Annie Gorgone delivering NOAA’s boat to Will Flannery’s for repairs on Friday. This NOAA boat is a RHIB — a rigid hulled inflatable boat — and once repaired will be sent to the Gulf of Mexico as part of a dolphin-counting effort.

Before the 21-foot boat could head out though, it needed some repairs. Which is why on Friday morning, NOAA marine biologist Annie Gorgone trailered the RHIB — or rigid hulled inflatable boat — from Beaufort to Oriental and Will Flannery’s repair shop.

There were leaks on the port side of the boat, Will said. It was the kind of thing that would require frequent re-pumpings if it weren’t fixed.

Will Flannery showing one of the several patches he had to put on the inflatable.

Will made the repairs to the dolphin-counting boat over the weekend. The job hit close to home and ties in to Will’s other sideline, Offshore Rafting, in which he takes folks out on the Pamlico Sound and beyond for dolphin watching tours.

The NOAA boat had been sidelined for several years in Beaufort. Aleta Hohn, director of the NOAA National Marine Fisheries program, says that cutbacks in recent years meant that the boat and biologists weren’t going out to count dolphin in NC waters.

Through the windshield of the NOAA boat.

The emergency in the Gulf reordered some priorities which is why the biologists will be busy once again doing “abundance” studies. To do that work, they needed a boat that could handle rough waters — whether out in the deep or in the shallow areas where they’d follow the dolphin.

The NOAA boat that was repaired in Oriental is one of two that will be working on the count. The two vessels will work two separate areas at a time, a method that aims to take in to account dolphins who might swim from one spot to another.)

Annie Gorgone says that another biologist will count the dolphins for the first two weeks, and then she will do a two-week stint. It’s expected that the NOAA teams could be out for more than 10 hours a day.

Biologist Annie Gorgone on the NOAA inflatable she brought to Oriental for repairs on Friday. After the fix, the boat will be headed to the Gulf of Mexico as part of a dolphin-counting study.

A camera is an important tool for the job. In particular says Gorgone, they are taking photos of the dorsal fins of the dolphin. Akin to a human fingerprint, the dorsal fin is such an individualized feature, it can be used to tell dolphins apart.

Over time, that dorsal fin data can be referred to if dolphins move far away or are found ailing in the water. Or even more tragically, if they turn up dead. What the biologists would want to know is how the dolphin were affected by inhaling or otherwise ingesting the BP oil that’s now polluting the Gulf.

Will Flannery, who repaired the boat that NOAA will use in the Gulf.

Aleta Hohn says that some aerial surveys have already shown dolphin swimming through the oily parts of the Gulf. Much has been said about the intelligence of dolphin, but Hohn says that they wouldn’t necessarily know to swim away from oil. For one, they don’t have a sense of smell. Even if they did, Hohn says, they might not instinctively know that oily waters could pose a risk.

As for how marine life in the waters of NC might be affected by the oil from the Gulf, Hohn says that NOAA will be on standby and watching for that. For the summer though, the boat that used to ply NC waters, will be off the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi. “We’re just happy,” she says, “to be helping in the Gulf.”

Posted Monday June 14, 2010 by Melinda Penkava

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