"I used to joke that if I were a dolphin, this would probably be the last place I would choose to live."
The bottlenose dolphins of the St. Johns River have a favored spot where they like to hang out, frolic, eat and socialize. It’s near the BEA Systems dry dock, east of Blount Island and just west of where the Intracoastal Waterway comes up from the south and meets the St. Johns.
The animals seem to like it there, even though on a recent sunny weekday morning it was hardly a bucolic little hideaway. Instead, it was more like a watery superhighway, sprinkled with dolphins.
Power boats zipped by, some stopping to take in the dolphins’ antics. An air-boat full of tourists came in for a look. Two jet-skis raced through, heedless. Everyone moved aside as a giant red container ship came marching imperiously down the middle of the river. Just overhead, a helicopter buzzed by.
A little to the west were two big dredges, not at work at that moment but still hard to miss — visible reminders of a multi-year plan to deepen the river to provide for even bigger cargo ships.
Dolphin researchers at the University of North Florida have been trying to figure out if the river dredging is hurting the St. Johns’ 300 or so dolphins, the 150 who call it home and the 150 who visit it seasonally.
Read more at the Florida Times-Union