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A really special project
to help dolphins and people be friends

If you were a dolphin, you would have reason to be concerned.

Almost every where in the world, dolphins are getting hammered by humans.

Whether it is the yummy dolphin burgers of Japan, the coastal development in the Middle East and Eastern Australia, or the drift nets in the Pacific, where-ever you go, dolphins are getting the rough end of the stick.

Is Townsville any different? Who is looking out for Townsville's coastal dolphins?

Cleveland Bay is the home to three species of dolphins:

  • Snubfin
  • Bottlenose
  • Indo-Pacific Humpback

Other marine mammals including whales and dugongs are also found in Cleveland Bay. Lets not forget other endangereds such as the marine turtle (bless their cotton flipper socks) and two of 9 species of sharks recently added to the IUCN endangered species list.

In short, the conservation management of the dolphins (and all the other animals) is incomplete and their long-term future is in doubt.

Around the world, dolphins are going extinct, and this fate may also come to the Townsville Dolphins as well. By some accounts this might not be such a calamity after-all.

It is suggested that dolphins are the second most intelligent creatures on the planet after white mice, and that humans come a distant third. In this instance, it is humans who will suffer the sixth extinction before the dolphins do (quite fitting as it was our gene pool who precipitated the damn thing).

Anyway, here is an abridged version of how the dolphins sing it, seconds before they depart planet earth, leaving the humans to suffer the subsequent events:

So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear?

You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that
grow around you

So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish

The world's about to be destroyed
There's no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the planet dissolve

Despite those nets of tuna fleets
We thought that most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your
pregnant women

So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long

So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish
 

Map showing Halifax Bay and Cleveland Bay off the Coast
of Townsville Local Government Area, North Queensland.
Image source: GoogleEarth.

 

A call to action

In July 2007, an international team of dolphin researchers declared that the famous Yellow River Dolphin of China was extinct. Caput.

Closer to home the Ellis Beach Snubfn dolphin population, off the coast of Cairns, was wiped-out by shark nets. Fears are held for the Indus River Dolphin, the Amazon pink river dolphin and just about every other Coastal and River Dolphin on the planet.

Let's make sure that the Dolpinhs who play for Townsville don't go the same way.

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