Help us by DONATING to
The Dolphin Alliance Culture Project!
We are currently planning to run the Dolphin ALLIANCE CULTURE Project for 8 years, including 7 years of fieldwork, with a total eight-year budget of $1,000,000. This includes all field operating costs, the new Dolphin ALLIANCE PROJECT boat and car, and funds that will be used for expensive new equipment (e.g. fancy new echo sounder to record dolphin feeding underwater) and to fully support two PhD students for five years each. A million dollars is a lot of money, but some scientific laboratories run on millions of dollars a year. Dolphins have the largest brains after humans, accounting for body size, and we think learning what dolphins are doing with those big brains, understanding dolphin intelligence in the wild, is incredibly important. We hope you agree and will join us in this effort!
We would love to see this page go viral, for if 50,000 people each contributed $20 the project would be fully funded. We value each and every contribution. Please share this page!
Fund our fieldwork!
You can fund the project for a day ($350), a week ($2500), a month ($10,000) or an entire field season ($50,000). The period of time you fund will be named in your honor or that of a loved one of your choice. Wind prevents us from going offshore every day, but if you fund a time periods we will name a day, week or month of research after you on social media posts (e.g. Jane Smith week). Once we have funded a field season we will start raising funds for the next. We are hoping to begin the Dolphin Alliance Culture Project in 2024!
Your funds will be used to pay for travel to and from the field site for a team of five, accommodation and use of boats and cars at the SBDR research station, food and fuel, and the purchase of key equipment like drones and the cameras we use to photograph dolphin fins for identification. A complete budget breakdown is available upon request.
The Alliance Culture boat: $60,000
While we can work off of existing research boats, we need a new boat that will focus exclusively on collecting the key data for this project: behaviors and vocalizations from over a dozen second-order alliances. The Alliance Culture boat will also collect the most basic data needed by all SBDR projects doing research on the male alliances, who is with whom in groups and who is consorting a female together, which are critical for quantifying alliance membership and evaluating the success of each male in an alliance. Your contribution will go further yet as the Dolphin Alliance Culture project boat will be available for other SBDR projects when not in use to study alliance culture!
The Alliance Culture Car $60,000
A four-wheel drive vehicle is needed to launch and retrieve The Dolphin Alliance Culture Project boat, to drive to different locations on the Peninsula to supply projects working from other camps, and to study dolphins close to shore. The car will also be used to transport people and boats to be serviced and to and from Perth. One of our existing cars is on it’s last wheels so this need is somewhat pressing!
