We were doing a normal morning cruise where we do look for the Australian Humpback Dolphins and the resident bottlenose dolphins. We’d seen dolphins. We’d gone over towards Fraser Island, where we were pulling up for a swim. So we’d just dropped the anchor, just done a little swim safety briefing, and some of the guests had just dropped off the boat, and was standing on the coast of Fraser Island when Cassie and I saw this animal coming towards us. Looks like a big Sousa coming towards us. No, no, it looks a bit different. And then it surfaced behind the boat. No, big, big, round head. We both were so excited, because, again, that’s not a Humpback dolphin. What is it? You know? And it had another breath, and we got what we thought was an Irrawaddy dolphin, only to learn later on that really Irrawaddy are in a different zone. The dolphins we have in Australia are the Snubfin Dolphins. So Cassie grabbed a couple of quick photos as it sort of swam past us.
But of course, we couldn’t go and have a look, because we had guests on the beach, so once we get all them back on board, we went looking for it, but couldn’t find it again. But what made it really exciting is I’ve been on the waters here almost daily since 1996 and that’s the first one I’ve ever seen.
Normally, they are north of our region. Our region’s Hervey Bay, but as things go we sent a photograph to a friend of mine, Daniele Cagnazzi, he now works for the Department of Science and Environment of Queensland Government. Nearly 20 years ago, he started his whole marine career with me as a research, a volunteer on one of our early boats taking photographs of dolphins. Went on to do his PhD on humpback dolphins, led a research group called the Capricornia research group for dolphins, and is now with the government. But he studied a lot of Snubfin dolphins along the coast of Queensland.
So by sending him the photograph, he confirmed it was a Snubfin Dolphin.
-Blue Dolphin Tour (story by Peter, photos by Cassie)
This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 72 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here.
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