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Hi everyone! My name is Hannah Baker and I’m a 2025 Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship student studying Earth and Environmental Sciences with a minor in Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan. For my summer internship, I worked at the National Coastal Centers for Ocean Science (NCCOS) Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, South Carolina, studying Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphin teeth as a biomarker of freshwater exposure.

Hannah Baker holding the Tamanend's bottlenose dolphin tooth samples that she used for her internship. She cut the teeth in half with a saw and used a half section to scan using Scanning Electron Microscopy. In the cabinet behind her is 30 years of dolphin teeth samples! (Image credit: Bonnie Ertel)

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Tamanend’s bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops erebennus ) in the Charleston Estuarine System have faced an increased exposure to freshwater, which is harmful to their skin , often resulting in lesions and other maladies.…