Diving with dolphins is always an experience to be treasured. Diving with the world’s smallest dolphin, and one of the most critically endangered dolphin species worldwide is next to impossible; and unless the current trend changes, these incredible little creatures will soon be extinct in the wild.
Maui’s Dolphin: The Facts
While you might think that Maui’s Dolphins would be found in Hawaii, as they may have been at some time, they are now found in only one place on the planet: off the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Generally found close to shore, these dolphins were once abundant, but their population has been reduced to lower than two hundred, due to inappropriate fishing habits in which the dolphins are caught as bycatch, killed, or injured and left to drown. Luckily, New Zealand’s fishermen are now taking steps to prevent accidental catch, and are doing their part to attempt to bring the species back from the brink.
Sacred to the Maori people, both Maui’s and Hectors dolphins have a number of traditional names, including Papakanua, Tupoupou and Hopuhopu, along with the name Aihe, which is used to describe all dolphins. Once thought to be a separate group of Hector’s Dolphin, which is also found only in New Zealand, but which is a separate population that lives around South Island, Maui’s Dolphins have a lifespan of about twenty years. While females grow to be as large as 1.7 meters long and can weigh as much as 50 kilograms, males are slightly smaller and weigh less. With distinctive black, white, and grey stripes that run lengthwise down their bodies, short rounded dorsal fins, and a shorter snout in relation to their heads than some other dolphin species display, they have a solid build and move gracefully through the water.
Like other dolphins, this species is intelligent and sociable, playful, and capable of displaying emotions like affection. They feed on fish, spend their time playing, twirling strands of seaweed, and mock-fighting with one another. Like their larger relatives, Maui’s dolphins use echolocation to find schooling fish, and they communicate via a series of vocalizations that include squeaks, chirps, and buzzes.
If you are lucky enough to encounter these dolphins while diving in New Zealand, you should immediately report sightings to the Department of Conservation. They tend to be spotted near river mouths in less than twenty meters of water, and while they look very much like Hector’s dolphins, the two populations have never been known to intermingle or interbreed; scientists have used DNA to deduce that it has been at least 1,000 years since the two species shared genetic material.
One reason for the decline in population is that females do not mature until the age of seven to nine years, and after that, they produce only a single calf every two to four years, causing population to increase very slowly. Pollution and loss of habitat are real threats to these dolphins as they are to critically endangered marine life everywhere. New Zealand’s marine mammals, including Maui’s dolphins, are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1978, and touching or harassing them in any way is strictly prohibited. By doing your part to help protect this population, you can have a direct effect on the species’ survival.