On December 10, 2024, a juvenile bottlenose dolphin was reported tangled in fishing line near Riverhead, in the upper reaches of the Waitematā Harbour. The dolphin couldn’t flex its tail properly, or dive, or chase fish. Its pod headed elsewhere. One larger dolphin stayed behind, and for the next month it stuck close, spending almost all its time with the struggling young one. DOC staff watching from a boat thought the larger dolphin might be bringing it food. Dolphins get their hydration from fish, points out Massey University cetacean specialist Karen Stockin. “So there had to be some level of provisioning for the animal to have survived as long as it did.”
The dolphin was finally cut free on January 9. DOC’s disentanglement team sliced away 156 metres of recreational line, hooks, and soft bait—but the help came too late. The dolphin was found dead on a beach six days later. Its plight had been national news; now, Ngāti Whātua gifted it the name Te Ihu Wai Pounamu. In a necropsy, Stockin found the dolphin died of blood poisoning, caused by wounds that had been unable to close. Te Ihu Wai Pounamu had suffered severely, and for a long time. “Earlier intervention would have likely seen a different outcome,” Stockin says.
A week after the publication of a case study to this effect, a southern right whale was found trapped in the ropes and buoys of a blue cod pot line off Stewart Island/Rakiura. Learning from the death of the dolphin, DOC acted quickly. The dangerous disentanglement went like a dream, and the whale literally swam into the sunset. The paper about Te Ihu Wai Pounamu had been a delicate one to write. But it had a real-world impact. “That’s the whole point,” says Stockin. “That’s what we should be doing, as scientists.”
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