December 20, 2014

Editorial stimulates thought on climate change and our ocean friends, while one article presents marine mammal population data from aerial surveys of the southern California bight. Another article documents a rescued orphaned manatee calf behavior in captivity versus what is seen in wild. Finally a valuable paper that presents data to standardize a body scoring system for short beaked dolphins, critical for examination of live and dead dolphins. The authors used live and dead stranded and dead bycaught short-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) from New England waters, and came up with a simple, practical body condition scoring system that has utility for all delphinid species.