World Dolphin Day: Reporting unusual behavior, threats and increased protections

Filed 1h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

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Dreamlike

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: PMO Barbados from Bridgetown, Barbados · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

World Dolphin Day, marked September 12, highlights that nine dolphin species and several subspecies are critically endangered or endangered per the IUCN, including the Lahille's bottlenose dolphin, now down to fewer than 400 individuals due largely to gillnet bycatch off South America. Investigations by the Environmental Justice Foundation found banned drift nets still widely used in the Mediterranean's Alboran Sea, with the EU expected to propose stronger rules in November.

On a brighter note, a Singapore resort reportedly suspended captive breeding and wild sourcing of dolphins for its oceanarium, holding over 20 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins descended from 2008-09 Solomon Islands captures, while researchers off Australia filmed dolphins using empty sea snail shells to trap fish, a foraging technique previously seen only on the opposite coast.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Banning a fishing net on paper and actually getting it out of the water are two different chores, and the Mediterranean story shows the gap between them plainly. Good on the Singapore resort for finally stepping back, though 'long overdue' is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The dolphins figuring out the snail-shell trick on their own, with no help from any regulator, might be the most competent actor in this whole story.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Dreamlike · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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