How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 072: Species Tuesday, the Hector's Dolphin
Hector's dolphin is the smallest cetacean but has a very big battle ahed of it. They are considered endangered with population is less than 100. Endemic to New Zealand, the Hector's dolphin is protected in a number of Marine Protected Areas from gill nets and trawl fishing; however, it doesn't seem to be enough. Listen to the podcast to find out why.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session72
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, session 72. Today is going to be the new found species Tuesday. It's going to be where I talk about a specific species that I find interesting so that hopefully you will find interesting as well. Today we're going to talk about the Hector's dolphin, its conservation status, what's happening to it, what it means to us, what it means to the species, and what we have to do to protect it. All on today, speak up for blue podcasts. Stay tuned. Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, he just discovered periscope and might be slightly addicted. Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Your voice for the ocean. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. Foundersspeakupforblue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer. That's right, I am an entrepreneur that works to protect the ocean. It's what I do. And one of the ways I do this is through this podcast to reach an audience that I would never normally reach either through YouTube or through Facebook or through Twitter. It seems like a podcast audience is very unique. And you guys have been showing a lot of love by just downloading and subscribing to the episodes, providing me with a lot of reviews and ratings, five-star ratings even. So, I'm really thankful for that. I really, really appreciate that. And of course, today's Tuesday. Yesterday, I launched a crowdfunding campaign to help support this podcast. Help me dedicate more time to this podcast and go more in-depth on a lot of the stories that I provide. You can do so by visiting www.speakupforblue.com. forward slash patreon is the platform that I use. And it's a monthly support system that allows creators like myself, podcasters and other YouTubers to get support from fans that love their episodes. So, you can go there, speakupforblue.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. And you can give your support through that way. We have lots of different incentives for each level of support. And we have goals you'll see on the left on the page that we want to hit to make it this show better and improve it so much more. So, let's get into the episode today. We're going to talk about, this is something new that I've decided to do. I want to kind of segment all these shows into something special and something that you guys can look forward to every, you know, every week. So, Tuesday is going to be now known as Species Tuesdays, where I'm just going to take a random species that I like, that interests me, or that is important, or that needs conservation protection. And just kind of give it to you guys because you guys have to know about this stuff. You guys want to know about this stuff. That's why you come to me. That's why you come to this podcast. So, today we're going to talk about the Hector's Dolphin. Hector's Dolphin, the conservation status is endangered. Population was estimated at 7,000 at one point. Now is estimated at under 100. The, I'm not even going to bother to put the scientific name. We're trying to pronounce a scientific name. I think it's Cephalorhynchus hectori, right? Cephalorhynus hectori, I think. It's a very small dolphin. It's one of the smallest, it's this deep smallest dolphin around. It weighs up to 110 pounds. Length is about 4 feet. And it lives in, it's endemic, which means it's only found in New Zealand. North and South shores of New Zealand all over the place. Around New Zealand, it's a really cute animal. It's got, their back is dark gray and fades into a white underside, which is kind of a cool thing. You know, they've got patches, they've got, hold on, I'm reading the wrong one here. I'm looking at the wiki page here. Sorry, let's go back. Looking at the wrong one, I was comparing them to the Viquita. Viquita's a porpoise and Hector's Dolphin is obviously a dolphin. So it is one of the smallest dolphins. The mature adults have a total length of 1.2 to 1.6 meters. The weight is between 40 and 60 kilograms. The species is sexually dimorphic. That means the females are slightly longer and heavier than the males. The body shape is stocky, so short and stocky with no discernible beak. So it just kind of goes right into the mouth. The distinctive feature is the rounded dorsal fin with a convex trailing edge and undercut rear margin. So it's a very smooth out dorsal fin. It's not, you know, it's not very sharp like other dolphins. The overall appearance is a pale gray, but when you look at closer reveals, a complex and elegant combination of colors. The back and sides are predominantly light gray, while the dorsal fin flippers and flukes are black. The eyes are surrounded by a black mask, which extends forward to the tip of the rostrum, which is the tip of the nose, essentially. It's not a nose, it's a rostrum, but it looks like a nose. And back of the base of the flipper, a subtly shaded crescent-shaped black band crosses the head just behind the blowhole. The throat and belly are creamy white, separated by dark gray bands, meeting between the flippers. A white stripe extends from the belly onto the flank below the dorsal fin. So at birth, the hectares of the calves have a total length of about 60 to 80 centimeters and weigh between 8 and 10 kilograms. Coloration is the same as adults, although the gray has a darker hue. Four to six vertical pale stripes caused by fetal folds affecting the pigmentation are present in the calf's body until the age of about six months. So essentially, like I said before, the population and distribution are around the south islands of New Zealand. It's only found in endemic to New Zealand. And they're found in a bunch of bays and coasts and peninsulas all around there. So they have been heavily studied in New Zealand. However, their conservation status is endangered. What happens is these dolphins, a lot of the deaths are at the bottom sets of gill nets and trawl fisheries, which is pretty apparent in New Zealand. What happens is the filament that's used to make the nets are very pale for these dolphins. So they can't discern them. They can't tell them apart. They can't see that there's actually a net there, so they go right into that. And they follow trawlers because it disturbs and it disturbs all the flatfish. If there's some flatfish that escape or red caw that escapes, which this species affected, the species affected dolphin actually feeds on, then they'll go after it. And then of course, they get caught in these nets by accident if they get caught. So you don't want to see this type of death, right? We don't want to see how badly these animals die. So with all of this death from the trawl nets and the gill nets, the population declined significantly. And now, of course, like I said, there's maybe 110 or the nationwide estimate for bycatch in commercial gill nets is 110 and 150 dolphins per year. So obviously, this is not a sustainable way of protecting these dolphins. So what happens is the New Zealand government proposed a set of plans to avoid further extinction of Hector's dolphin, including protecting closing areas where dolphins are normally found and changing the fishing methods to avoid catching dolphins. So the plan involves essentially three steps. The first step is to change the voluntary codes involving practice and monitoring for fishermen. The second is to close in short areas of fishing or from fishing. And the third is formed around this potential biological removal concept, which tells how much change would need to be done to protect the dolphins and how much of the dolphin's extinction is caused by humans. So once they did the test, they realized that there's definitely further protection needed. So they decided their first marine protected area for Hector's dolphins was designated in 1988 at Banks Peninsula, where commercial fishing was effectively prohibited out to four nautical miles offshore and recreational gill netting was subject to seasonal restrictions. A second MPa was designated on the west coast of the north island in 2003. Populations continue to decline to bycatch outside of the MPa. So the MPa is working, but outside the population was declining. So that's not obviously a good thing to happen. So additional protection was introduced in 2008. Banning gill netted within four nautical miles of the majority of the south islands east and south coast out to two nautical miles offshore off the south island's west coast and extending the gill net ban to the north island's west coast to seven nautical miles offshore. So highly restrictive areas all around the distribution areas of where Hector's dolphins are found. So there are also restrictions placed on trawling in some of these areas. Further details on the regulations and mystery you can see at the Ministry of Fisheries website. So five marine mammal sanctuaries are designated in 2008 to manage non-fishing related threats to Hector's and Maui's dolphins. So there's Hector's and Maui's dolphins. Hector's there's actually two subspecies of this dolphin. There's the Hector's and then there's the Maui. The Hector's is the more abundant and the Maui's the more I guess rare species, but they're not that rare, but they're both subspecies are going extinct. So the regulations for these non-fishing related areas include restrictions on mining and seismic acoustic surveys, which can also affect dolphin sort of presence. You know, when you when you get seismic acoustic or anything with noise related underwater, you're not going to find marine mammals. They're going to go away. They're just it's proven number the countless times that if they can move away from the areas that will be great. However, these areas are important for breeding or if they're important for feeding, then that can seriously affect the population size and health. So further introductions or restrictions were introduced into terranaki waters in 2012 and 2013 to protect Maui's dolphins. So there's a scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission has recommended extending protection of Maui's dolphins further south and further offshore to 20 nautical miles from the coastline. The IUCN has recommended protecting Hector's and Maui's dolphins from Gailnet and trailfishes from the shoreline to 100 meter depth contours. So there's obviously a lot these species have a broad range of different over different depths and a distance from the coast. There's a lot of things that are going on within New Zealand. Obviously, there's mining, there's seismic acoustic surveys for what potentially could be oil and gas development later on. And there's also fishing. You know, these three are very important industries. And of course, the Hector's and Maui's dolphins are very important from an ethical standpoint and a conservation standpoint to New Zealand. So balancing this approach is very difficult. However, the fact that the species is so rare now and that it's going extinct, we need to protect the species. So there's a lot of protected areas that are there. There's a lot of areas that are protected. There's a lot of suggestions of how these areas should be protected. A protected IUCN has recommended protecting these species out to the 100 meter depth contour, but doesn't mean it's actually happened. Right. So now it goes into a process. This process has to be approved by the government. And of course, the government has to talk to all the stakeholders involved, which includes oil and gas, includes mining, includes fishing, who have a right to be there in terms of they want to make their money and they want to be able to survive to support their industry, which we heavily depend. So there's definitely a balance. Of course, I am more prone to protecting the dolphins instead of oil and gas and seismic surveys. However, you know, this is the way we live. This is the way it goes. And you know, you never know what I discussed yesterday in terms of the climate change agreements, you never know how governments now are going to tackle these issues. Are they going to support ways for fishing, for oil and gas, for mining, when it could disrupt the ocean, not just the fact that it could make a species go extinct, but it could disrupt the regular processes of the ocean, especially from human behaviors, trawling and gill netting. But, you know, how are these countries going to go forth and how these countries going to manage it with this agreement in place, this international agreement that's bounded with 195 countries, right, where everybody has to, where each country has to provide an update, a progress report every five years. So how is this going to work now with this new agreement? Is it going to affect anything? Is it not? I don't know. But I'd love to hear you let me know. You can put a comment on our show notes. If you go to www.speacupforblue.com, you can, sorry, speakupforblue.com/session72, you can put a comment there and just think, will this agreement change the way endangered species are managed, the way human resources or human use in the ocean are managed? And do you think, do you think with this agreement, is everything going to change? Or is it not? So you can use that using the Hector's Dolphins page. We're going to put up some pictures from the Wikipedia page, because we can, because it's Creative Commons, hopefully, and you can see what they are. We can hopefully put out the distribution, the population distribution, show where they are in New Zealand, how far out they go. So I think that'll be interesting. So yeah, that's basically it for the podcast. We appreciate your listening. And of course, you can always support us at www.speacupforblue.com/patreon and become part of the Speakup for Blue community, a growing community, that now I can interact with more. So that's it for me today. You've been listening to Speakup for Blue podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Happy conservation. [Music]