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# Istanbul's dolphins have names now, and one of them was first photographed in 2012
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/bosphorus-dolphins/
- Published: 2026-10-03T05:06:34.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-03T05:09:38.000Z
- Description: In the strait that runs through the middle of Istanbul, researchers are photographing dorsal fins the way police photograph fingerprints, and the fins keep coming back with calves beside them.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Conservation, Global Good News, All stories

Istanbul is a city of almost sixteen million people built on both sides of a strait, and through that strait, the Bosphorus, run ferries, tankers, fishing boats, and dolphins. Three kinds live here, bottlenose dolphins, common dolphins and the small shy harbour porpoise, and this year a team from the Marine Life Conservation Society, known in Turkey as DYKD, working with WWF Turkiye, has been following them one animal at a time. Their method is photo identification. Every dorsal fin carries its own pattern of notches, nicks and scars, as individual as a fingerprint, and a good photograph of a fin lets a researcher recognise that dolphin years later, follow its movements, and see whether it is raising young. Off Fenerbahce, on the Asian shore, the team has recorded groups of up to fifteen bottlenose dolphins with at least three calves among them. One fin in the file matched a photograph taken in 2012, which means that dolphin has been threading between the ferries for at least fourteen years.

![Two bottlenose dolphins surfacing side by side, their dorsal fins clear against grey water](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/bosphorus-dolphins-fins.jpg)

Two bottlenose dolphins off Sagres, Portugal. Every dorsal fin carries its own notches and scars, which is how the researchers tell one animal from another. Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Cansu Ilkilinc, marine and biodiversity specialist at WWF Turkiye, says the observation of healthy calves shows the Bosphorus remains an important habitat for dolphins, and that what has changed in recent years is not the animals but the attention: more people watching, more photographs, more days on the water. Tavsan Island, one of the small islands in the Sea of Marmara, is now checked three times a week, and the survey runs from Heybeliada in the Princes' Islands up past Haydarpasa and the Maiden's Tower into the strait itself. Where the fish are plentiful, the dolphins follow, and the files of fins are slowly becoming a family album for a stretch of water that most of the world thinks of as a shipping lane. Anyone standing at the rail of an Istanbul ferry with a coffee in hand can see it for themselves on a good morning: a grey back rolling through the wake, then another, then a small one close beside it.

### Sources and links

Our short take: the full story is by Daily Sabah with Anadolu Agency (11 June 2026), drawing on the Marine Life Conservation Society (DYKD) and WWF Turkiye.

- [Istanbul researchers track dolphins to study Marmara Sea life, Daily Sabah](https://www.dailysabah.com/turkiye/istanbul/istanbul-researchers-track-dolphins-to-study-marmara-sea-life) The survey and the quotes.
- [Our story: Pomeco story](https://www.earthtoseanews.com/pomegranate-leather/) Another good story from Turkey.