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Mammals

Several hundred Bottle-nosed Dolphins live six months of the year in the Potomac. Depicted here, a mother with her young.

In June 1608, when John Smith and his team of explorers sailed their shallop up the Chesapeake Bay on their "voyage of discovery" and became the first known Europeans to lay their eyes upon the wondrous river that the Powhatans had told him was called the "Patawomeck", they found its waters teeming with fish and its banks inhabited by numerous and diverse mammals.

page 56: wolves, bears, deer,and other wild beasts

beavers, otters, bears, martins and minks we found, and in divers places that abundance of fish, lying so thick with their heads above the water ...

page 58:

Having gone so high as we could with the boat, we met divers savages in canoes, well loaden with the flesh of bears, deer and other beasts, whereof we had part.

page 59: neither better fish, more plenty, nor more variety for small fish, had any of us ever seen in any place so swimming in the water.

Early European colonists who settled along the Potomac found a diversity of large and small mammals living in the dense forests nearby. Bison, elk, wolves and panthers (cougars) were still present at that time, but had been hunted to extirpation by the middle of the 19th century. Among the denizens of the Potomac's banks, beavers and otters soon met a similar fate, while small populations of minks and martens survived into the 20th century in some secluded places.

There is no record of early settlers having observed marine mammals in the Potomac, but several sightings of bottle-nosed dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were reported during the 19th century. In July of 1844. a pod of 14 adults and young was followed up the river by men in boats as high as the Aqueduct Bridge (approximately the same location occupied by Key Bridge today).

Since 2015, perhaps as a result of warmer temperatures, rising water levels in the Chesapeake Bay and improving water quality in the Potomac, unprecedented numbers of bottle-nosed dolphins have been observed in the river. According to Dr Janet Mann of Georgetown University's Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project, more than 500 individual members of the species have been identified in the Potomac during this period.

https://archive.is/tentv http://www.pcdolphinproject.org/research/ Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project (PCDP)

The Potomac River American Shad Restoration Project is an excellent example of a successful restoration project. [ ... ]

Until recently, American shad stocks have remained depressed in the Potomac River, despite significant improvements in water quality made over the last several decades and a river harvest moratorium that has been in effect since 1982. ICPRB spearheaded a collaborative effort to stock American shad that began in 1995 and was designed to imprint shad to the historic spawning and nursery waters and help rebuild Potomac River shad stocks. Source: https://www.potomacriver.org/focus-areas/aquatic-life/american-shad/

http://virginianaturalhistorysociety.com/banisteria/pdf-files/ban11/Banisteria%2011_Wilcox_bottlenose%20dolphin.pdf

https://archive.is/plrEc https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bottlenose-dolphins-potomac-chesapeake