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The dolphins’ numbers have declined drastically over the last four decades due to fisheries bycatch. The dolphins become trapped in gillnets and trawl nets and ultimately drown. For the last 15 years, Hope Spot Champions Professor Liz Slooten and Dr. Barbara Maas have been working to bring together NGOs across the globe to fight for the protection of the dolphins by banning gillnets and trawl nets in the dolphins’ habitat. In 2012 at the World Conservation Congress, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) issued recommendation 142 urging the New Zealand government to ban gillnet and trawl net use from the shoreline to the 100 meter depth contour in all areas where the Hector’s and Māui dolphins are found. As of today, over seven years after the IUCN issued this recommendation, the New Zealand government has neither accepted nor implemented it.
Professor Liz Slooten has dedicated 30 years studying the Māui and Hector’s dolphins and is the foremost expert on the dolphins. She says, “Reducing the amount of gillnet and trawl fishing in dolphin habitat is known to work. In two areas where long-term research has been carried out, by Otago University and Auckland University, the population was declining rapidly before partial protection and is now stable or slowly declining. Unfortunately, the last few attempts at protecting these dolphins created protected areas that were far too small, followed by research showing that protection is still not effective. This time it is critical that we get it right. The Māui dolphin and several of the smallest Hector’s dolphin populations simply won’t make it one more time around this protection and research merry go ‘round.” Read full article on Mission Blue's website
“Every single day, we make hundreds of decisions either towards or away from plastic,” adds Longobardi.
“It’s just an incremental shift. But little by little, one by one… these choices add up.”
(c) Steve Dawson