On behalf of Dr. Stefanie Gazda and myself, we are happy to share our recent publication with you titled "Fifty Shades of Gray: The First Leucistic Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) Sighting off the Cedar Keys, Florida, Gulf of Mexico" published in Aquatic Mammals.
Gazda, S. K., and M. L. Russell. 2022. Fifty Shades of Gray: The First Leucistic Bottlenose Dolphin (
Tursiops truncatus) Sighting off the Cedar Keys, Florida, Gulf of Mexico. Aquatic Mammals; 48(6), 661-665, DOI 10.1578/AM.48.6.2022.661
Summary: This is the first sighting by dedicated marine mammal researchers of a hypopigmented, suspected leucistic bottlenose dolphin in the north-eastern Gulf of Mexico (GOM). The adult female dolphin nursing a normally colored calf makes the sighting even more unusual. The use of news articles that are over 50 years old aided in the creation of this paper and represents a potentially useful dataset of information in public records regarding rare sightings such as leucistic marine mammals in never-before-reported locations like the north-eastern GOM.