Mote Marine Laboratory

Ginger Returns Home

With a crowd of dedicated supporters and volunteers watching, Ginger returned home to Sarasota Bay on Feb. 9, after successful treatment at Mote Marine Laboratory’s Dolphin and Whale Hospital.

Ginger, the bottlenose dolphin that stranded Dec. 16, 2008, on Siesta Key, was released back to her home waters just after 8:30 a.m. The dolphin submerged after being released from the sling that had been used to carry her to the water then thrilled the crowd with four giant leaps. Ginger was released behind Mote’s main Lab building on City Island — a place she frequented before becoming sick.

“It was so great to see,” said Bijli Myers of Siesta Key, who was among the first to find Ginger when she stranded on the beach back in December. “It was like redemption — here was something that was so sick and dying. It was so great to see her come to life again. It felt like good Karma.”

Since Ginger has been back in her home waters, she’s been monitored by a team of researchers from the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, a partnership between Mote and the Chicago Zoological Society. “We were very pleased with Ginger’s release and her movements since her return to the wild,” said Dr. Randall Wells, the program’s manager. “She made several energetic leaps shortly after release and was swimming strongly for the first 1½ hours that we followed her."

Program staff will continue to monitor Ginger’s movements for the next two months.

In fact, a key aspect of Mote’s dolphin research and rehabilitation efforts is the ability to see how well patients do after release. For offshore animals, that usually means attaching a satellite-linked tag and tracking a dolphin remotely. While this provides a wealth of very important information, it usually doesn’t allow us to see the animal with our own eyes.

In Ginger’s case, though, since she’s an animal that is already monitored by the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, Mote doesn’t need satellites. Instead, Ginger was outfitted with a small VHF radio transmitter before the release, allowing researchers to use a radio signal to easily locate her and then visually monitor her as she re-acclimates to her normal habitat.

After her release, Ginger headed south through an area considered her normal range. We know it was her normal range because the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program has been studying the area’s local dolphins since 1970. Ginger has been seen 129 times in the wild since her birth in 2005.

We also know that:
•    Ginger was born in 2005 and is now 3.5 years old.
•    Her mother is a dolphin known as 127.
•    She separated from her mother at the end of May 2008, just before her mother gave birth to another calf. Mote studies have shown that dolphins typically stick with their moms for three to six years.
•    Ginger’s mom, 127, is 13 years old.
•    Ginger was 127’s first calf.
•    Ginger’s grandmother is also a long-term resident of Sarasota Bay. The grandmother is 50 years old and has been observed by researchers since 1975.
•    Since her birth, researchers have observed Ginger in the wild 129 times. She’s been observed from Longboat Pass south to Venice Inlet.

While in our care, specially trained Mote volunteers spent 1,320 hours monitoring her condition, providing vital information to the medical team about her progress. Ginger also ate nearly 4,000 live pinfish provided by Hart’s Landing in Sarasota — that’s 35 pinfish fed five times a day at about $1 per fish.

Medications and tests for sick animals can also be costly.

Donations play a key role in supporting Mote’s ability to respond to injured and sick wild animals, bring them to their hospitals for treatment, monitor their conditions upon return to the wild and understand their lives in the wild. In order to bring the next animal like Ginger to Mote for recovery, treatment and release, we rely on reserves.

Click here if you would like to make a donation to help rebuild those reserves following Ginger’s successful treatment and release so that we can respond to new animals.