Fig 1.
Geographic extent and radar from historic flood event, April 2014.
Top left: estimated total rainfall over the two-day event, between 8:48pm on Monday April 28th and 9:20am on Wednesday, April 30th; Top right: 24-hour radar estimated rainfall between 9am Tuesday, 29 April– 9am Wednesday, 30 April, zoomed in to show the most impacted region; Bottom: Stranding data coverage area and Pensacola Bay study site location; Figures obtained from NOAA National Weather Service, accessed on May 25, 2019: https://www.weather.gov/mob/2014_April29_FlashFlood.
Fig 2.
Study area showing survey area, track lines, and seasonal locations of all dolphin sightings (presented here as “best” estimates from the number of dolphins estimated in the field).
Seasons defined in text; Coastal sightings were excluded for analyses; CTD stations are those monitored by the EPA (discussed in text) and are labeled in accordance with a previous publication [13].
Fig 3.
Traces of dolphin bodies used to determine what 10% of the dorsal surface would look like at different surfacing angles.
Traces completed in Image J by calculating the number of pixels traced of the entire dolphin and then excluding 10% of those pixels from the dorsal surface.
Fig 4.
Daily rainfall and discharge data surrounding the flood event.
Above: daily freshwater discharge from gauging flow station; Below: daily rainfall measurements; Data obtained from USGS Molino, FL flow gauging station (02376033) near the mouth of the Escambia River.
Fig 5.
Salinity-depth profiles from EPA CTD stations along a transect that runs through the Escambia-Pensacola Bay system (see Fig 2) for April–August 2014.
Station numbers are listed across the top (P01-P09) where P01 is located at the mouth of the Escambia River and P09 is at the mouth of Pensacola Pass. Escambia Bay opens into Pensacola Bay roughly at station P05; Channel distance is the distance from station P01.
Fig 6.
Salinity-depth profiles from EPA CTD stations along a transect that runs through the Escambia-Pensacola Bay system (see Fig 2) for September—December 2014.
Station numbers are listed across the top (P01-P09) where P01 is located at the mouth of the Escambia River and P09 is at the mouth of Pensacola Pass. Escambia Bay opens into Pensacola Bay roughly at station P05; Channel distance is the distance from station P01.
Table 1.
Numbers of unique dolphins seen each season and the numbers of individuals utilized to estimate skin lesion prevalence and extent.
Table 2.
Prevalence (with sample size in parentheses) of skin lesions seen on dolphins found in the Pensacola Bay system over time and by category.
Table 3.
Extent of skin lesion coverage measured as categorical ratings.
Table 4.
Lesion extent progression over time in 21 individuals that demonstrated lesion extent ≥5% at least once in the four seasons evaluated.
Fig 7.
Total number of bottlenose dolphins (Tt) and Tt perinates stranded per month and year, per region, from 2012–2016.
Top: Data from Alabama counties impacted by the flood (Baldwin and Mobile counties); Middle: data from the Western Florida Panhandle counties impacted by the flood (Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Okaloosa counties); Bottom: data from the Eastern Florida Panhandle counties that were not impacted by the flood (Walton, Bay, Gulf, and Franklin counties).