Dolphins and whales

Category

New report: Rising slaughter of small whales and dolphins

Killings of small whales, porpoises and dolphins are rising, with more than 100,000 of these marine mammals slaughtered each year, according to a new report from German and British NGOs. Many regions report increased catches driven by demand for dolphin meat as food and shark bait in areas impacted by economic crisis and dwindling fish stocks. Failure to address unsustainable exploitation of small cetaceans exacerbates ecological imbalance and heavy metal toxicity risks to humans who eat them, according to the...

Dolphin Awareness Week 2024

It seems fitting as the last post was ‘Whales Threatened by Us’  Dolphin Awareness Month, held each March, to raise and spread awareness about these amazing marine creatures – and the merciless killing of them. Dolphins are variously described as the smartest marine animal, and human’s best friends in the sea with a long history of being friendly with human beings. This friendliness has come in. the form of ‘dolphin therapy’ in places such as Monkey Mia here in Australia; and protecting humans from other sea-based...

Creature Feature…Freshwater dolphins

We have featured dolphins – Hector’s dolphin of New Zealand, and the apex predator that is the Orca (or ‘killer whale’) …. introducing the very unique dolphins that live in freshwater systems – rivers! River dolphins are a polyphletic group of fully aquatic mammals that reside exclusively in freshwater or brackish water. They are an informal grouping of dolphins, which itself is a paraphyletic group within the Cetacea. . The baiji – Lipotes vexillifer, Lipotes meaning “left behind” and vexillifer...

Creature Feature | Hector’s Dolphins

    DOLPHINS In Australia, The Dolphins are a professional rugby league football team based in the Redcliffe Peninsula area of the Moreton Bay Region, that competes in the Australian National Rugby League (NRL)…. for the purposes of this article: a dolphin is a small aquatic mammal in the  “A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins),...

Dolphins found with contaminates!

Florida scientists have found human-made pollutants in the blubber of whales and dolphins – however these were not the main cause of the animals becoming stranded. About 500 whales and dolphins strand themselves every year – no one knows exactly why, although theories abound. Researchers found a wide range of substances- PCB, DDT, NPE ( found in food packaging). ( source and full article- https://www.insidescience.org/news/research-shows-range-contaminants-blubber-whales-and-dolphins ) *** A future blog will look at whale strandings...