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The Richards Bay Humpback Dolphin
[ Humpback Dolphin Updates ]
Posted by Shanan Atkins on December 02, 2002 at 17:09:39:
White Tip was the dolphin we were most familiar with. She was here in 1998 when we first arrived in Richards Bay to study humpback dolphins. We saw her during 75% of our dolphin research follows, more often than any other dolphin. She was a Richards Bay Resident. This was her turf.
During the first year that we watched her, she was followed around by an energetic youngster we called Junior. Junior was a real acrobat and used to show off all the time jumping, somersaulting, and just generally exuberating. By the end of 1998 the little dolphin was growing up, not shadowing White Tip as much, and fishing for herself. We were fiercely proud of Junior’s newly acquired independence.
In April 1999, we spotted White Tip with a tiny new baby. It was very exciting. The baby was named Spike, for no good reason, and we have always referred to Spike as ‘he’, even though we can’t be sure of his gender. Although he was never quite the show-off that Junior was, he provided us with quite a few ‘Kodak moments’. I think he was always a little more independent than Junior was and didn’t seem to follow White Tip as closely.
In October in 1999, we noticed something very strange about White Tip’s head. I noted in our logs “WT has a wound/brownish-red growth on her melon” (forehead). We took pictures with us to a marine mammal conference but none of the researchers and vets recognised this ‘disease’. Two years later we took a photograph that showed clearly that what was on her melon wasn’t a disease but her top jaw! It looked as if her top jaw had been broken and was twisted backwards. We wondered if she’d collided with a boat or if she’d been in a fight with another dolphin (dolphins aren’t little angels in the ocean living in perfect harmony – they are wild animals). In spite of this injury she managed to feed and survive. And bring up her youngster, Spike.
Because we saw White Tip so frequently, she was special to us. She featured in our slideshow, on our website, in our pamphlets, and she’s been on national TV more than once. Hundreds of people have heard her name and seen her pictures.
She’s even had a whole species of dolphin named after her. SA Today, a TV programme, did a story on our project. They mistakenly broadcast that, in addition to humpback dolphins, white-tipped dolphins also occur in Richards Bay!
By the end of 2001 Spike had grown up a lot and was no longer at White Tip’s side. We were getting excited, anticipating a new addition to the local humpback dolphin population. Would a new baby arrive?
Rather unexpectedly, we didn’t see White Tip very often in 2002. The few times that we did see her, there was no small baby flanking her. We wondered where she was spending her time. Perhaps she was taking advantage of the freedom of not having a calf around and was travelling more widely. Perhaps her broken jaw had compromised her ability to maintain her ‘territory’ and she’d been forced to the outskirts.
On the first of November White Tip and a small calf were found dead in the Richards Bay shark nets. The newest arrival died next to his mother before we’d even had the chance to get acquainted.
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