|
UPDATE
The North Carolina Maritime Museum has a license plate program with a great
conservation message. By purchasing the special "Protect Wild Dolphin" NC
Maritime Museum special license plate you will be supporting the museum's
research, conservation and education programs.
Demonstrating your interest in protecting bottlenose dolphins and their
habitat and making your car look better!
Bottlenose dolphins along the east coast of the US are severely and negatively
impacted by human activities. After a die-off that killed up to half of
the population, the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1993 listed them
as depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Since then dolphins
have washed ashore dead with evidence of having been struck by boats entangled
in fishing nets and with foreign material (human trash) in their stomachs.
Yet little basic information that is critical for their conservation is known,
such as reproductive rates, residency, migration patterns and habitat needs.
The NCMM license plate proceeds help protect and increase our understanding
of bottlenose dolphins that frequent the North Carolina coast. Revenues from
the plate sales will go the Friends of the Museum to support the education,
conservation and research programs of the North Carolina Maritime Museum
in Beaufort.
Keith Rittmaster, Natural Science Curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, has been studying the bottlenose dolphins in Beaufort since 1985. He and his wife Victoria Thayer, research assistant Nan Bowles and several volunteers use photographs of the dolphins' dorsal fins to identify the individual dolphins - a process known as "photo-identification". The scars and notches that the dolphins acquire on their dorsal fins are used to track the movements, associations, and birth rates of the known dolphins. "We are also learning about the movements of the dolphins in waters beyond Beaufort by regularly collaborating with other researchers along the coast," says Rittmaster. He has matched dolphins identified in Beaufort with photographs from study sites as far as central Florida to the south, Virginia Beach to the north, and many sites in between. This collaboration is critical to the study, and researchers
from the Virginia Marine Science Museum, National Marine Fisheries Service, Duke Marine Lab, Nags Head Dolphin Watch and UNC-Wilmington all share photographs and data.
Rittmaster hopes to learn more about dolphin behavior and human impact on dolphins and the environment. Sale of the dolphin plates will benefit both this project, and environmental studies and educational field trips that are part of the Maritime Museum's Cape Lookout Studies Program. capelookoutstudies.org
For each $30 plate purchased, the Friends of the Maritime Museum support group will receive $20. To personalize a dolphin plate requires an additional $20.
People seeking an application for a Maritime Museum "Protect Wild Dolphins"
license plate may:
 Go to their local license plate agency
Contact DMV at (919) 861-3575
Download & print application in PDF format (150k) 
Download & print application in Microsoft Word format (254kb)
Thank you to our first 300 proud 'Protect Wild Dolphins' plate owners!!
These documents are presented in PDF format (Portable Document Format) allowing you to view them in their original form. If you have not already installed this software, you may download it free from Adobe.
Thanks for your interest and support!
| 
;)