NEWS DESK
Dolphin’s death in surf at Portsea back beach
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By Mike Hast DOLPHIN researcher Jeff Weir’s heart sank when he got the call from Parks Victoria to collect a dead dolphin washed up on Portsea back beach last Saturday week. Although partly inured to finding dead dolphins during his 20-plus years as executive director of the peninsula-based Dolphin Research Institute, Mr Weir was visibly upset as he cradled the twomonth-old female calf an hour later. He carried it up the beach and took the 1.1-metre long, 15-kilogram juvenile to Melbourne Zoo for an autopsy by zoo scientists. It was discovered the mammal, a common dolphin (Delphinus delphis), had sustained a fractured skull and rostrum (snout), bleeding liver and its ribs had punctured the lungs. Its stomach was full of mother’s milk, and there were slight teeth marks on its body, probably caused when its mother tried to save it. The dolphin had been dead only a few hours. A jet ski rider is being blamed for the death, although Mr Weir was quick to say it was probably an accident. “It was pretty wild and woolly out there,” he told The News. “There were many riders zooming around in rough conditions and it would have been hard to see a small dolphin. “It looks like a jet ski landed on top of the young dolphin and it probably died quickly.” Mr Weir said most dead dolphins he had seen during his career had died of natural causes. An exception was a two-year-old calf born to a Port Phillip bottlenose dolphin known by researchers as Ripley, which was fatally struck by a boat in 2001, its spine smashed by the propeller. The institute has been photographing, identifying and naming Port Phillip dolphins since the late 1980s when it launched its adopt-a-dolphin campaign to raise funds and awareness. “Ripley spent more than 24 hours in vain trying
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to hold her calf up and I must say there were tears all round that terrible day,” Mr Weir said. He said the one positive result was the incident raised awareness about how water craft operators should behave in waters off the peninsula and other parts of the Victorian coast. Marine laws require boats to stay 100 metres from dolphins, and jet skis 300 metres. Rulebreakers can be fined more than $100,000. The dolphin’s death sparked calls by peninsula tourism operators for better protection of the mammals from water craft. Port Phillip is home to a sub-species of bottlenose dolphins, and a pod of common dolphins arrived to live in waters on the eastern side of the bay in about 2005, a rare event that attracted the admiration of dolphin researchers worldwide. Operators of Sorrento-based Moonraker Dolphin Swims and the multi-award-winning Polperro Dolphin Swims said people needed to be educated about the consequences of their actions around dolphins. Moonraker director Torie Mackinnon was reported as saying that only last week she saw an incident in which more than 20 jet skiers “buzzed” a pod of dolphins and their calves off Rye. She was horrified to see children jump off jet skies and try to grab their fins. Troy Muir of Polperro said he also witnessed the incident and had seen others. It was not a oneoff incident; it happens quite regularly, he said. Glenn Sharp of the Department of Sustainability and Environment said the best way to protect the mammals was to educate people to observe them from the legal distance. DSE was considering an education campaign to teach people how to behave around dolphins. Mr Sharp said the harassment claims would be investigated. Anyone using their boat to deliberately hit a dolphin would have it seized.
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Mornington News 13 January 2011
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