Common bottlenose dolphins are Florida’s most widely recorded marine mammal after the manatee, with 3,217 records. Gulf Islands National Seashore leads the named sites at 169 and Everglades National Park follows at 151, while Rookery Bay and the Pinellas County coast fill in much of the Gulf shoreline between them.
Records peak in March but don’t fall off sharply the rest of the year, staying above 150 a month even in the leanest fall stretch, a pattern that fits a resident, year-round coastal species rather than one tied to a narrow migration window. NatureServe hasn’t assigned Florida a numeric rank for this species (SNR), and the record here likely reflects boat-based survey effort and shoreline visibility as much as true dolphin abundance offshore.
Full species profile
