Rare atypically coloured dolphin spotted in Australia
One of the world's most unusually coloured dolphins has been spotted in Australian waters for the first time. It is one of only six cases worldwide with photographic evidence of a dolphin with the extremely rare skin condition 'piebaldism'.
Transcript
00:00 We were actually about to head in for the day and we saw this big splash in the distance.
00:06 So we thought we'd go over and see what it was.
00:09 The closer we actually got to it, we realised that it didn't look the same as the other
00:15 dolphins we'd been seeing all day.
00:17 It seemed to have like distinct white bits and also was very dark, so it was a bit different.
00:22 And so we thought we'll hang around for a bit, try and see it again, because it had
00:26 kind of swum up a little bit.
00:28 So we followed it in total for about 45 minutes and got quite a lot of photos and we managed
00:33 to get a few videos as well.
00:36 And so once we came in for the day, we started trying to work out what we'd actually seen
00:41 and came across that we think that it's got this condition called piebaldism.
00:46 And had you heard of dolphins with piebaldism before?
00:50 So before this, I hadn't, but as soon as we started looking it up, it was pretty obvious
00:56 that that's what we were seeing.
00:58 And you're pretty certain that it is actually piebaldism and the dolphins not sick from
01:02 something?
01:03 Yeah, 100%.
01:04 So the dolphin was an adult size.
01:08 It was within the group of common bottlenose.
01:10 So it was a pretty similar size to the other dolphins it was with.
01:13 It also wasn't particularly skinny or didn't have any other weird looking lesions on it.
01:19 There's a pretty famous dolphin over in America called Patches that looks pretty similar to
01:25 this one and has the same condition.
01:27 And what causes the condition?
01:28 So it's a genetic mutation, but apart from that, because it hasn't been seen that much,
01:35 not many people actually know like really what causes it.
01:38 And did you name it?
01:40 Yes, we did.
01:42 Good stuff.
01:45 And so how excited were you when you realised that this was the first sighting of a dolphin
01:52 with piebaldism in Australian waters?
01:55 We were pretty excited.
01:56 So when I started looking up the literature and what had been documented, I realised that
02:02 it had never been talked about or seen in Australia before.
02:05 So obviously everyone kind of knows about Megaloo, the white humpback whale.
02:09 So we were kind of like, oh, we've got our own thought of Megaloo in the dolphin world.
02:15 And so you were out there, and this is in Harvey Bay on a research trip.
02:21 Can you tell us about the research you're doing?
02:23 Yeah, so I'm actually doing my PhD, looking at the connectivity of dolphins from Caloundra
02:30 up to Harvey Bay.
02:31 So we're looking at what species are present and how connected those populations are.
02:36 And what species are present there?
02:39 So of our resident ones, we've got the common bottlenose dolphin, the Indo-Pacific bottlenose
02:45 dolphins, which are a bit smaller, and the more vulnerable Australian humpback dolphins.
02:50 And how long have you been involved in that research project?
02:53 So I'm two years in now.
02:56 And what have you found about the connectivity up until now?
03:00 So before this, there had actually been no research done on the Sunshine Coast on the
03:06 dolphins that were present.
03:08 And up in Harvey Bay, the published research that had been done was over 10 years ago.
03:12 So kind of everything that I'm doing is pretty novel and exciting.
03:18 And so how are you getting an understanding on the connectivity, apart from going out
03:24 in boats and observing them?
03:27 Are you involved in dives as well?
03:30 No, so we take photos of their dorsal fins to ID each individual dolphin that we see.
03:37 And we're also doing some genetic sampling as well to see how connected they are.
03:42 And are there, have you noticed any mixing between the pods in the last two years that
03:47 you've been involved in the project, or are they pretty separate?
03:51 So like within each region, so up in Harvey Bay, then further down in the Great Sandy
03:57 Straits and down on the Sunshine Coast, like the population seems to be pretty consistent
04:03 and just together.
04:04 But within them, the groups that they hang out in tend to change.
04:08 And what can you tell us about the group that Speckles is in?
04:11 So I'd actually never seen any of the other four dolphins it was with before.
04:18 They were some common bottlenose dolphins, so we don't see them as often, but we do occasionally
04:23 see them.
04:24 There was a mum and a calf in there, and we don't know what gender the others were.
04:29 And with the pods, is that a quite a small pod to be getting around?
04:33 You said Speckles was in a group of four.
04:35 Are they much bigger pods or a lot of them quite small?
04:40 It's something that I have been noticing as part of my studies that the ones in Harvey
04:45 Bay do tend to be in these slightly smaller groups of about five individuals quite often,
04:51 whereas down on the Sunshine Coast, they seem to be in much larger groups of about 20 upwards.
04:57 And the group that Speckles was in, it looked like he or she, because I'm guessing you don't
05:01 know the sex of Speckles yet, but it looked like he or she was well accepted by the group.
05:09 Yeah, it was at first a little bit further away from them, but for most of the 45 minutes
05:16 we were following it, it was with them.
05:20 And are you expecting you're going to see it again over the next couple of years?
05:26 So the next day we went out and we spent about three hours in the middle of Harvey Bay trying
05:32 to find it again.
05:33 We didn't have any luck.
05:36 And then this year when I was up there again, we didn't sight it again.
05:39 So we think it's more of an offshore individual that had come in that day, but we're hoping
05:45 we do see it again.
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