Day 102, Monkey Mia, WA

Monkey Mia is such a beautiful place and I can understand why the folks of Western Australia come here in the droves.  The Monkey Mia Resort caters for everyones needs from the very young to the more mature. Last night we celebrated Happy Hour in the "Monkey Bar" and watched the sun slowly sink.  The sky was dark and moody so I was able to get a few good photos.

This morning we had to be down at the jetty by 7.45am to watch the dolphins being fed.  This is a big resort but I didn't expect to see so many people already waiting as we arrived.  We were greeted by the parks and wildlife ranger who gave us some interesting information about the dolphins while we were waiting for the dolphins to arrive for their morning feed.  

When they started feeding the dolphins many years ago here at Monkey Mia, not a lot was known about the dolphin habits.  They were fed a lot more food, people were allowed to touch and mingle in the water with the dolphins and the dolphins were encouraged to stay in the shallow water.  All of these things almost saw the decline of the dolphin population in this area.  After much research it was found that:

1. A baby dolphin has to be vertically under its mum to get its milk so if mum is swimming in shallow water the baby didn't get fed.  There were many young deaths.
2. If the baby dolphin saw that mum was getting all her feed from humans it had no idea how to hunt in the open ocean

So restrictions were put on how much should be fed to the dolphins and that is just 10% of their daily needs.  Feeding is kept to a brief period of time in the shallow water so mum could go back to the open ocean to feed her baby.  Permits are required to feed the dolphins and also humans have to stay fifty metres away from the dolphins. 

 

Feeding the dolphins was over in a matter of minutes and everyone was asked to move away from the waters edge as this signalled to the dolphins that it was the end of the feeding, and that they should swim back out to sea.  However, when we returned to the beach around 10am we noticed that some of the dolphins has returned and were following the kayakers, and paddle boarders.  We grabbed a pedal boat for thirty minutes to see if they would come to us but no such luck.

I was a little disappointed that you could not be more hands on with the dolphins as that is what the majority of photos show, but I am also totally in agreement with the way that the dolphins are managed.  We have to protect these beautiful creatures at all cost.

GoPro to watch......