BEST
Year 7 Marine Mammal Foundation Incursion
As part the Year 7 BEST curriculum students have participated in an incursion studying the ‘Burrunan Dolphins’ that we find in Port Phillip Bay. Recently it was discovered that these Dolphins are a new and unique species of Dolphin and the Marine Mammal Foundation have been conducting research to establish the size and movement of these populations.
The program run by the Marine Mammal Foundation and allowed students to complete ‘Population assessments of Burrunan Dolphins’. The program allowed students to undertake the role of a dolphin researcher using the Foundation’s current techniques of dolphin population modelling. Students learnt how to distinguish individual dolphins based on nicks and notches along the dorsal fin and to use their current photographic catalogue to identify dolphins across seasonal surveys. This data is used to assess the population structure and answer the question ‘Is the dolphin a resident or transient individual within the population?’
Student Review
This week the year 7's had a special guest from the Marine Mammal Foundation, the guest was called Matt. Matt came in and taught us about the Burrunan Dolphin, a new species of Dolphin found only around some parts of Eastern Australia and Tasmania. Throughout the session we did an activity on identifying dolphins by their dorsal fins, Matt also showed us a presentation on how he and his co-workers came to find these dolphins and how they keep track of them. We learnt that there are a only a couple of populations in the world with a pod of dolphins in Philip Bay and one at Lakes Entrance, we were also taught how to identify which ones stay in the area and which ones migrated through winter. What I found interesting throughout the lesson was how they identified the dolphins by the shapes of the fins, I also liked how when the dolphins want to play they will swim with you but if there not interested they just go away. At the end of the lesson I feel I had learnt a lot, thanks Matt
Jasmine Godson-Verschuur, Mietta Dunne 7D