Bicref, the Biological Conservation Research Foundation, is intensifying its support of the Maltese Cetacean Research and Awareness Project with the assistance of sponsors.

This year is the Year of the Dolphin according to the Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans in the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and contiguous Atlantic area (ACCOBAMS).

One of the sponsors, the Melita Marine Group, has organised a gala night in aid of the foundation’s marine conservation work.

Since 1998, Bicref has assisted the long-term Cetacean Scientific Research Project of the Maltese Islands that was launched in 1996 by conservation biologist Adriana Vella.

Bicref has helped to promote awareness on the needs of various local species and their distribution in the central Mediterranean and around the Maltese islands.

MARINE experts have shepherded to safety a dolphin stranded in a small suburban lake in northern NSW.

The bottlenose dolphin had entered Prospect Lake at Ballina on an incoming tide eight days ago in search of fish.

But the noise and vibrations of a road bridge close to the lake’s entrance had deterred the mammal from turning back to safety in the Richmond River and eventually, the sea.

Stephen McCourt, marine sciences manager for Gold Coast theme park Sea World, said fears for the dolphin’s health grew because the lake, surrounded by housing developments, had a low level of salinity and only limited stocks of small fish.

He said two boats and seven staff from Sea World came to Ballina yesterday to help NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service personnel herd the dolphin out of the lake and into a narrow creek without stressing it by netting and transporting it by road.

“The plan was to net the animal near the entrance and try to drive it back under the road bridge,” Mr McCourt said today.

“It used to go to the entrance on a daily basis but would not go out.”

Faced with the choice of negotiating the nets and boats blocking its path to the lake or swimming under the bridge to the creek, it chose the latter option, Mr McCourt said.

“When it was presented with nets, boats and people behind it today or the road bridge, it chose the road bridge, which is a great outcome,” he said.

“It was pursued with a small inflatable boat down the narrow creek and back into the Richmond River.”

The dolphin, the sex of which remains unknown, was one of several which had been seen in the lake in the past, Mr McCourt said, adding that one had died there.

“That’s why we felt, with the invitation of NSW National Parks, that early intervention was the most appropriate outcome,” he said.

A MOTHER dolphin and her baby trapped in the Patawalonga could remain in the area for some time, experts say.

In a dramatic rescue, the pair was reunited on Sunday night after being separated on different sides of the weir.

Residents of Holdfast Shores apartments had seen the mother swim into the Patawalonga lake before 7pm, leaving two young dolphins on the weir’s seaward side.

Water police worked with conservation officers to coax the distressed younger dolphin, aged about three months, to join its mother. The older calf swam safely back out to sea.

They spent Sunday night in the river and were due to be ushered back out to sea this morning. But the mother refused to leave her new marina home.

Brett Pendlebury, a conservation office for the Department of Environment and Heritage said the dolphins would be able to live in the marina for some time.

“The main goal was to get the mother and her young calf together which we achieved successfully,” he said.

“Dolphins go into the area all the time and it is a safe place for them to be.

“There is a good food supply, a healthy salt level and sufficient shelter.”

Mr Pendlebury said the mother would lead the calf out of the area when the weir opens again some time in the next few days.

The Department for Environment and Heritage will continue to monitor the situation.

A pregnant bottlenose dolphin is deaf and cannot be released into the ocean.

The dolphin, Castaway, stranded off Vero Beach in November, but was deemed healthy enough for release Jan. 30, after convalescing at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.

But instead of swimming offshore, she returned to the beach three times and was transported to the Keys.

“We’ve officially deemed the animal as unreleasable,” said Blair Mase, a regional stranding coordinator for National Marine Fisheries Service.

“Deafness and other central nervous system issues she has would prohibit her from functioning normally.”

Schoolgirl Amy Morris is to realise her dream of swimming with dolphins and riding a rollercoaster for the first time.

Because she was born with a rare heart defect, the 12-year-old twice needed emergency surgery and had a pacemaker fitted to her original heart before, in October 2003, she received a life-saving transplant.

On Saturday the Westhoughton High School pupil flies to Walt Disney World in Florida after being chosen for the holiday of a lifetime by the Wish Upon A Star charity, which makes dreams come true for children who have suffered serious illness.

Amy, of Stanley Close, Westhoughton, was nominated by her mum, Tracy, and will travel to Florida with her dad, David, grandparents Marlene and Alan Backburn, 11-year-old sister Danielle and uncle Steven Calderbank.

She said: “I can’t wait. Because of my heart problems I haven’t been able to go on a roller coaster before it will be fantastic.”

Dolphin tagger extraordinaire Don Hammond went to the Bahamas last week looking to catch and tag dolphin for the Dolphin Tagging Research Project he heads.

What he didn’t catch was a break in the weather while fishing out of Highborne Cay in the southeastern Bahamas aboard Makara with Capt. Tom McMurray at the helm.

The Makara crew, out of Beaufort, N.C., and Hammond faced stiff east-northeast winds while fishing for dolphin on Great Exuma Sound.

“The weather was nasty, [with] east-northeast winds from 15 to 30 [knots] depending on the day. It was a typical Bahamas trip for me,” Hammond said with a laugh.

Despite the conditions, the venture was a success as the crew managed to tag and release 24 dolphin ranging in size “from 24 inches to well over 40 inches,” Hammond said.

The mission for Hammond, a retired S.C. DNR biologist who coordinates the tagging project through his Cooperative Science Services, LLC, was to help confirm a migratory path for dolphin from the Bahamas to central/north Florida and up to the Carolinas along the East Coast.

Hammond, through anecdotal information from anglers who fish for dolphin in both South Florida and the Carolinas, has a theory regarding dolphin catches along the Southeast coast. He says the general consensus is dolphin anglers in the Carolinas “tend to catch more big dolphin than [anglers in] South Florida do in a given fishing year.”

It is well documented through the tagging program that dolphin migrate northward up the Gulf Stream from South Florida in the spring to reach the waters off the Carolinas.

“If our fish were solely coming up the Florida Straits and up the East Coast, the Florida boys would have first shot at the big fish,” Hammond said. “Seeing that [Carolinas anglers] are catching more big fish than they are, there has to be another source [of dolphin] in the equation.”

The nomadic dolphin follow ocean currents in their migratory movements.

“Dolphinfish utilize the Gulf Stream and [similar] currents throughout the world as their highways, that is their highway system,” Hammond said.

Hammond surmises dolphin travel in the Antillean Current, moving northward up the eastern side of the Bahamas Bank. The current starts joining the Gulf Stream off Cape Canaveral and fully joins it off Brunswick, Ga.

Hammond’s program already has produced one tag recovery from a fish that was tagged in April, 2005, near Eluthera in the Bahamas and recovered 37 days later off Brunswick.

Hammond is hoping some of last week’s batch of tagged fish will be recaptured off the Carolinas coast, helping further prove his theory.

“I just hope we can see some of these fish show up off our [South Carolina] coast,” he said. “That would be fantastic.”

Why is Hammond so interested in proving the dolphin connection between the Bahamas and the Carolinas?

“We’re trying to prove it’s a common stock, that we’re fishing the same stock of fish, so as to indicate they must be managed jointly,” Hammond said.

Satellite tags

Hammond discussed the details of the data received from a pair of bull dolphin in the 30-pound range that were recently tagged off South Carolina with pop-off satellite archival tags.

The first fish was tagged on June 4, 2005, aboard Tag Team out of Mount Pleasant while the second was tagged June 21, 2006, aboard Jenny Lynn out of Charleston.

Tag Team’s fish was tracked for 10 days while Jenny Lynn’s fish was tracked for six days. The movement of the two fish, including water depth and temperature conditions, was constantly monitored by the satellite while the tags were in place.

“This is the first time we’ve ever been able to look at the diving behavior and temperature selection of dolphin,” Hammond said. “We have seen there are differences in diving behavior and temperature selection depending on the region they occur in.”

The satellite data showed the two tagged fish dove into water as cold as 61 degrees and, as Hammond said, are “purpose driven” when making deep dives.

“When they make these deep dives, they stay down briefly but never linger long in water temperatures below 71-72 degrees,” Hammond said. “They never spend more than 10 minutes [in water temperatures] below that.”

How does this relate to the typical dolphin angler in South Carolina?

“How many times have fishermen, myself included, come across this weedline in perfect water that has all the elements of perfect habitat, but you just find nothing there, it’s a desert?,” Hammond said. “We now know there may be fish associated with that weedline but they’re staying deep. They may be there but not at the surface when the fisherman comes by.

“These fish use a very large portion of the water column. This new data has proven that.”

Hammond relates a story on his Bahamas trip. Hammond said the mate got tired of “seeing dinner swim away” since all dolphin caught were tagged and released. He decided to target wahoo and deployed a deep bait on a wire line.

“The first two fish we caught [on the deep line] were dolphin,” Hammond said.

Scientists conducting the first-ever South American river dolphin census have sighted hundreds of dolphins, raising hopes about the survival of some of the endangered species’ populations.

The survey counted 520 dolphins — 321 grey (Sotalia fluviatilis) and 199 pink (Inia geoffrensis) — during a 294-kilometre voyage down the Amazon, Atacuari and Javari rivers in Colombia, Brazil and Peru.

According to the team of scientists —led by the Omacha Foundation, with support from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and WWF-Colombia — the results obtained in previous expeditions helped confirm that the Amazon dolphin populations are in better condition than those surveyed in the Orinoco River.

“The river count showed that although the dolphins face various threats, such as pollution, they have been able to survive in the Amazon in Colombia,” said Sauo Usma, WWF-Colombia’s Freshwater Programme Coordinator.

“We have noticed a change in the places where they are found, rather than a change in the number of individuals.”

The overall aim of the survey is to gather data on one of the endangered freshwater species in the world in order to design a management and monitoring plan, as well as get to know the state of the rivers and watersheds of some of South America’s largest rivers.

In previous legs of the expedition the team recorded: 270 dolphins in Venezuela (June 2006); 40 in Ecuador (July 2006); 131 on Colombia’s Meta River (August 2006); and 818 in Peru (September 2006).

A fifth and last expedition is planned for Bolivia between May and June 2007.

“Once we complete the Bolivian part of the survey, we will finally have dependable results on the state of river dolphin populations in the Orinoco and the Amazon basins,” Usma said.

“More importantly, we will be able to consolidate the necessary resources to set in motion a conservation strategy for these iconic species.”