Stable isotope ratios from northern Gulf of Mexico bottlenose dolphins (stranded and capture-release animals) and their prey (fish and crustaceans) from 2011-2018

We compared dolphin skin stable isotope ratios and dolphin prey stable isotope ratios. In parallel with bottlenose dolphin capture-release health assessments, we used otter trawls in Barataria Bay, LA and Mobile Bay, AL and seine netting in Sarasota Bay, FL to catch bottlenose dolphin fish and crustacean prey. We also aggregated historical samples from 2011-2018 of stranded dolphins and previous trawling efforts for fish and crustaceans. Dolphin samples included skin for live captured animals and liver, skin, and muscle for stranded animals; fish samples included muscle; crustaceans included tissue slurries or just tissue. We used these data to run stable isotope analyses comparing isotopic ratios in dolphins over time to determine if and how their diets may have shifted in relation to the DWH oil spill. Update 01202021: We added two new worksheets to this dataset that includes stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes of dolphin skin samples from several sites in Florida (Dolphin.samples.FL) that were collected between 2004 and 2008 and from Barataria Bay, LA in 2011 and 2013 and Mississippi Sound, MS in 2011 as part of a National Resource Damage Assessment after the DWH oil spill (Dolphin.samples.NRDA).