An ocean full of friends

Meerestiere an der Golfküste von Florida aus Notsituationen zu retten ist kein leichtes Unterfangen. KARIN HOLLY berichtet.

My name is Gretchen Lovewell. I’m 43 years old, and I’m the stranding investigations program manager at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida.

Our hotline gets about 600 calls a year that deal with dolphins, manatees, and sea turtles. People leave a message, my pager goes off, and I call the person back. First, I have to determine if the caller is really seeing an animal in distress. When that’s the case, we take action. Sadly, most of the calls we respond to have to do with animals that have already died.

Then we investigate why the animal died. We don’t always get an answer, but we try to. We collect the animals and do a necropsy — that’s an animal autopsy — here at Mote. Our goal is to find out all we can and use what we learn to avoid future harm to the species.

Luckily, many of our calls are about animals that are behaving normally. For example, some people call in panic because they think there is a mass stranding of manatees, when, in fact, all the animals are doing is mating.

I bring my lunch to work. My assistant, our interns, and I eat together. We are like a little family, and we chat about what’s happening during the day. Then, after lunch, we go back to work. I don’t like paperwork. I understand the importance of it, and I take it very seriously, but I would always rather be out in the field.

We see many injuries to marine life that can be connected to human interaction, such as boat strikes, or when the animals eat fishing lines and plastics. What is quite common in our area is dolphins being hurt by stingray barbs. We believe it happens when dolphins want to play with stingrays. I don’t think a stingray likes being thrown around by a dolphin’s nose.

It’s rewarding when we release an animal that we’ve rescued and assisted. It’s an amazing feeling. I even get excited when I find out the cause of death. Some days are just hard. Recently we picked up a dead turtle that we realized we had rehabbed and released two-and-a-half years ago. Once we had a mass stranding of 100 false killer whales in the Everglades. That has stayed with me. Anytime you see an animal suffer, it’s hard.

I very clearly remember the first live dolphin I ever got to work with. It was when I was in North Carolina, and she, the dolphin, went to a facility in Virginia. I drove six hours, worked all night, walking around the tank with her, helping her stay afloat. Later, she came to Mote. That was when I first began to learn about this place. The dolphin, Ginny, did die, but she left a huge impression on me. I even have a tattoo of her on my leg.

When I get home after work, it’s all about family time. My daughter is seven, and we practice tae kwon do together. I exercise quite a bit, which helps with the stress. I need my time when it’s just my dog and me. Even my husband can tell, and he often asks me if I need to go walk off steam with the dog.

It’s a big surprise if I get to bed before midnight. I like to read and spend some quiet time with my husband. We often bingewatch TV. We are big fans of the TV series Game of Thrones. Quite often, my phone will ring in the middle of the night, and that’s OK. It’s not a nine-to-five job. Animals don’t understand business hours or holidays and weekends, so neither do we. People visiting Florida love our wildlife. But I would like to tell them not to go near it. We see a lot of animal harassment. I understand that when people see dolphins, they want to jump in and swim with them. However, it’s dangerous for both the people and the animals. Watch them from a distance instead.