New Zealand bans swimming with dolphins

TOURISTS have been banned from swimming with dolphins at a popular New Zealand holiday destination because they are “loving them too much”.

Sharply falling dolphin numbers have meant that boat trips offering passengers a chance to swim with dolphin pods in the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland, have been halted. The population of bottlenose dolphins has fallen from 270 to about 30 – almost 90 per cent – in the space of just 20 years.

New Zealand’s Department of Conservation found that human interaction was “having a significant impact on the population’s resting and feeding behaviour”. Latest reports show an alarming 75 per cent mortality rate among the calves – far above average in both the wild and in captivity.

Swimming with one of nature’s most intelligent creatures has been a thrill for many visitors to the country’s subtropical North Island, where tour companies guarantee a 95 per cent success rate of finding dolphins on their excursions. Some of the tour staff have even given dolphins names.

But conservation officials think the relationship has become too close and unhealthy and have decreed that cruise operators may interact with them for only 20 minutes at a time to give the dolphins space to themselves away from the gaze and cameras of curious onlookers.

It is not the first time warnings have been sounded about their well-being. In 2016, Massey University reported that the Bay of Islands’ bottlenose dolphins were “being loved into extinction” as the creatures interacted with people to the detriment of feeding, sleeping, or nursing their young. Tourists can still swim with common or dusky dolphins off the South Island.