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The Dolphin Intelligence in the Wild Project!

We are currently planning an initial five year run for Dolphin Intelligence in the Wild, including 4 years of fieldwork, with a total five-year budget of $600,000. This includes all field operating costs, a new boat, car, and small mobile housing called a ‘donga’, along with supplies including cameras for identifying dolphins, drones, hydrophone arrays, and a fully supported PhD student. It 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 30,000 people each contributed $20 the project would be fully funded. We value each and every contribution. Please share this page!

We are hoping to begin the Dolphin Intelligence in the Wild Project in 2026 or 2027 depending on how soon we raise the funds. Here are the most expense infrastructure items we need:

The DAP Mobile home: $100,000

To house the researchers for this project we need a small mobile home that will remain at Monkey Mia by the existing research station.

The DAP Boat: $50,000

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 new boat will also be used to 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.

The DAP Car $50,000  

A four-wheel drive vehicle is needed to launch and retrieve The Dolphin Intelligence in the Wild 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!