The New Zealand Department of Conservation has banned tourists from swimming with bottlenose dolphins off the North Island’s Bay of Islands after human interaction was negatively impacting on the lives of the marine mammals.
Research has shown that humans were “loving the dolphins too much” and interactions were “having a significant impact on the population’s resting and feeding behaviour”. The new rule was implemented to counteract plummeting numbers of dolphins, which have decreased by 66 per cent since 1990 – in 1999, there were an estimated 270 bottlenose dolphins residing in the area. Today, the population figure is estimated at only 31 and the bottlenose dolphins could disappear from the Bay of Islands completely if the population continues to plummet. The species is classified as endangered in New Zealand.
Alongside banning tourist swims with bottlenose dolphins, tour operators may interact with the dolphins only for periods of 20 minutes (reduced from 30 minutes) at a time, and all tour operators will be restricted to visiting either morning or afternoon, in order to provide a block of time where the dolphins are left alone after it was discovered the dolphins spent 86 per cent of daylight hours near to at least one boat. The possibility of creating a marine mammal sanctuary in the Bay of Islands is also being investigated by the Department of Conservation, research groups and local Māori tribes.
The ban only applies to bottlenose dolphins in this particular region, tourists can still swim with dusky or common dolphins in New Zealand.
