Aussie's seemingly innocent dolphin video leads to $431 fine
The viral video ultimately landed the fisherman in hot water, much to his surprise.
A man in Queensland has been slapped with a tidy $431 fine for hand-feeding a wild dolphin after his brother’s video went viral – but a marine expert says the seemingly innocent act is actually the tip of a larger problem.
The Wide Bay fisherman was caught after someone reported the online clip to the Department of Environment and Science, which shows several adult dolphins and a calf approaching the boat in Tin Can Bay.
“The video then shows the man cutting a mullet in pieces and feeding it to one of the adult dolphins on several occasions,” Tina Ball, Senior Wildlife Officer from the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service said.
While the man admitted to feeding the dolphin at Snapper Creek, both brothers said they had no idea it was an offence as people can pay to feed dolphins at nearby Barnacles Cafe.
“This is a regulated activity overseen by the department and ensures the dolphins don’t receive their daily food intake and continue to hunt for fish in the wild,” Ms Ball said.
Offence changes dolphin behaviour
One leading dolphin expert fears the animals may have already been conditioned to humans at Tin Can Bay.
“It's actually pretty difficult to get dolphins to the point where they’ll take fish from people,” Jeff Weir, Executive Director at the Dolphin Research Institute, told Yahoo News Australia. “They’re wary, they don’t normally do it, so to get it to the point where this sort of thing happens it means there's been a fair bit of background happening as well to condition animals to expect that they can get fish.”
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The act of feeding has the potential to change behaviour, Mr Weir said, pointing to a tourist hotspot in Western Australia where several bottlenose dolphins are fed daily.
“When they started Monkey Mia, they found they almost lost a whole generation of young calves because the mums were coming in to get food and were neglecting their responsibility to their calves,” he explained. “I use the analogy that it’s like human mums leaving their kids in the car to go and play the pokies. There's always a consequence.”
Feeding dolphins puts human's lives at risk
Beyond affecting the normal behaviour of dolphins, feeding the animals can also have an impact on their health as well as putting people at risk.
“People forget that dolphins are not animals that are perpetually swimming around wanting to play lovey dovey with humans,” Mr Weir said. “They’re actually normally predators in the wild.”
“They are quite curious and they'll come up say g’day and in most cases are quite benign and inquisitive, but more and more there are examples of dolphins around the world that have actually injured people and indeed even to the point of permanent spinal and renal injuries.”
He added that like most wild animals, humans “need to respect them” and “feeding them is not actually showing them respect”.
“It's actually putting them at risk and potentially other people,” he said
Maximum penalties for feeding a wild dolphin in Queensland can top $11,500 while failure to follow the rules, which include boats keeping 50 metres away from dolphins, can result in fines of up to $17,000.
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