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Seeing dolphins near the shore causes a lot of excitement, with Coast residents even getting out of their cars on their way to work and wading into the water to get a closer look.
Recently there have been a lot of sightings around the Hibiscus Coast; 200 have been logged on the Whale & Dolphin Watch Whangaparaoa Facebook page since it was created last year – a quarter of those in the last month.
Keeping a close eye on that page are researchers from Massey University, including North Shore resident Blair Outhwaite.
The occurrence of bottlenose dolphins around the Hibiscus Coast and North Shore form part of the basis for Blair’s science degree thesis.
He says the Facebook page alerted him to the number of sightings of these nationally endangered dolphins around Whangaparaoa Peninsula and he decided to investigate further as part of his studies with Massey’s Coastal-Marine Research Group.
He says this is the first project to focus solely on this area and, with little baseline research to work from, his project (known as The Hauraki Gulf Bottlenose Dolphin Project) is accumulating valuable data on where bottlenose dolphins occur and how frequently.
Blair says that it appears that most of the dolphins spotted around the Hibiscus Coast are bottlenose – this species tends to come further inshore and can get into quite shallow water. They also do more aerial displays than common dolphins.
Blair’s work could uncover whether there are locally based dolphin pods frequently visiting the area, as well as the locations where they most commonly occur.
The researchers conduct surveys up and down the coastline, when the weather is good, and also respond to reports on Whale & Dolphin Watch Whangaparaoa.
It was while checking out a report of dolphins at Tindalls Bay recently that Blair and the team came across a group of orca foraging and socialising south of Tiritiri Matangi Island.
The Whale & Dolphin Watch Whangaparaoa page was set up on Facebook a year ago by Stanmore Bay resident Charlotte Chapman. She says every time dolphins are seen locally the page gets a few more members, but can get 50 or more when there are orca sightings, because of their rarity.
A highlight of Charlotte’s own encounters with dolphins came last month when she was out fishing. “We were out for five hours and saw dolphins everywhere,” she says.
Blair says he hopes more locals will log their dolphin and whale sightings on the page to aid this important research.
He says while seeing these animals in the wild is very exciting, it’s vital that they are respected and given sufficient space – DOC has strict rules about this.
