Vivamar is the only society active in all of the neighboring countries of the NE Adriatic Sea: Slovenia, Italy, and Croatia. We connect our research to the people in order to make positive changes and encourage sustainable development of the sea.
Dolphins are the main focus but other large marine vertebrates in the local area such as sea turtles and sharks are also important to our studies. These top predators play an essential role in maintaining balance, long term livelihood, and sustainability for the marine ecosystem. In fact, the direct translation of Vivamar is “long live the sea!”
Volunteering
You’re a perfect volunteer for us if you:
- admire the sea
- love animals… especially dolphins and marine life
- are looking for a new knowledge, experiences in marine biology, mixed with a hint of adventure to add to your CV.
As a volunteer with Vivamar, you’ll help with conservation and research of the last resident dolphins in the Northern Adriatic Sea. By working closely with marine biologists, volunteers get hands-on experience in dolphin research. Volunteers are also directly involved in dolphin data collection, dolphin identification, dolphin social bonds, analysis of dolphin data and community outreach volunteer activities.
The important scientific data allows people and all stakeholders to learn more about the dolphin sub-population. This means that researchers can do more to protect these animals even with volunteer help in supervised data collection. Without the crucial baseline information, it is impossible to lobby for implementing the needed changes to protect these last marine mammals and to mitigate the potential human pressure on dolphins.
Researching Bottlenose Dolphins since 2001
Vivamar has researched the common bottlenose dolphin population in Slovenia and along the west coast of Istria in Croatia since 2001.
Due to a 50% decline in the dolphin population over the last 5 decades and losing two dolphin species from the area in the same time window, Vivamar focuses on how we can keep our bottlenose dolphins from disappearing from the area as well. We mean it when we say that YOU, even being a volunteer, can make such a big difference by volunteering!
This can be a life changing and most beautiful experience in someone’s life. Our mornings will be spent learning about data collection and dolphin identification and volunteer afternoons have us out mostly in the field – in the sea!
