Sad loss to dolphin science

Posted by Shanan Atkins on April 18, 2004 at 20:00:47:

Beebop was special to us. He was identifiable in a sea of dolphins that we struggle to identify. We first saw him when he was very young and we watched him grow. We couldn't help but become endeared to him. We had hopes and dreams for him and for what he could teach us about his species. We are saddened by the fact that, at the age of three, he died in the shark nets.

On Friday (2004/04/16) the Natal Sharks Board notified us that there had been a humpback dolphin caught in the Richards Bay shark nets. I went to see if I recognised the dolphin. The body was of a young male and it was so fresh that rigor mortis had not yet set in. I recognized the fin as belonging to a dolphin that was in our catalogue as #43, known to us as Beebop. We first saw Beebop on 23 April 2001, a tiny baby alongside his mother #6, LineL. We saw Beebop quite often because LineL is one of Richards Bay's resident dolphins (only two other mothers, Zipper and Venus, have been seen more often than LineL). By age two, Beebop's fin was quite identifiable with two notches and a distinctive fin shape. Most youngsters aren't very identifiable and once they leave their mother's sides we can no longer identify them. This is a pity because it means that we don't know what happens to them - do they stay in the area, do they leave never to return, do they leave but come back sometimes? Because he was distinctive, Beebop was going to help us begin to answer these questions. The literature suggests that humpback dolphins calve about every three years, so we were expecting LineL to have another calf soon and we were very excited to investigate Beebop's reaction to a new arrival. The day after Beebop died we found a group of dolphins that included LineL and, to our surprise, a tiny new baby, probably just days old. Usually when a new baby arrives, the older sibling is forced to leave his mother's side. We presume that without his mother's protection and guidance, Beebop fell victim to the shark nets.

To see the pictures that accompany this newsletter, visit our website’s news page http://www.dolphins.org.za/news.htm

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