Monkey Mia & Dolphins

As promised, more memories from Australia. I thought I'd work backwards...for no other reason than I can remember what we did most recently the best. For the earlier stuff from the trip, I will revert to my journal.

For the last few days of our vacation we went to the most touristy stop on our itinerary, Monkey Mia. The Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort was established for and subsists almost entirely on the dolphins that come ashore for daily feedings from the national park rangers. They come ashore because, starting about forty years ago, fisherman and later tourists fed the dolphins. Once a very remote fishing and pearl harvesting area was suddenly inundated with people feeding the dolphins all throughout the day, touching them and swimming with them. The tourists fed them everything from fish to french fries to steak. Despite the obvious problems that come from feeding an animal food they don't normally eat and touching a wild animal, the continual feeding actually endangered the breeding of the dolphins. Generations of dolphins were not learning how to hunt for food themselves and the mothers were not feeding their young. The female dolphins feed there young through an opening on the underside of their bodies in their midsection. If the mothers were constantly going to the shallow water to get fed by beachgoers, the babies no longer had an opportunity to have enough space to get under their mothers to feed. Eventually the babies would starve or get eaten by one of the thousand of sharks in the neighborhood because the dolphins had also stopped hunting in pods or groups, thus disabling their inherent protective hunting technique. All of this was explained by the rangers leading the feedings.

To improve the situation and also allow tourism to continue, the National Parks rangers are now the only people allowed to feed the dolphins and are only allowed to feed them the equivalent of 1/4 of their daily intake. They also only feed female dolphins that come from a line of dolphins that had been inappropriately fed in the past. This translates to the feeding of about five female dolphins. The also only feed before noon with the first feeding starting at 7.30 am, but I think this has more to do with getting tourists to stay overnight in the exorbitantly expensive hotel on the beach's shores instead of them driving the 25 kilometers from the nearest small town where the prices are much lower.

I was incredibly excited about seeing the dolphins up close and in what I thought would be a natural environment. I also thought I would get the opportunity to snorkel or dive with them so I was disappointed, but could understand. We had the beachouse closest to the dolphin feeding area and it had a great front porch so I wasn't too disappointed because it was a great way to end the vacation. I couldn't help, but feel a bit silly, though, for spending so much money to see the animal kingdom's equivalent to welfare recipients or, excuse the turn of phrase, but dolphin white trash. I mean, think about it. One of the mothers we took so many pictures of had lost something like five of seven children from malnutrition and we watched as the current child had to squeak and prod the mother to deeper water so he could eat. Instead, she played it up for the cameras and raced up and down the beach for the tourists and could have for an hour had the lead ranger not insisted on speeding up the feeding so that the mother would leave the shallows.

The main difference I noticed in going to a tourist trap was the high amount of Asian tourist...mostly Japanese. On the national parks tour outside of Darwin and in Cairns, I had heard tour operators comment that the biggest impact the recession was having was the decrease in Asian and mainly Japanese tourists. In the next breath, though, they would shrug and say that at least they didn't have to put up with their aggressive and sometimes ignorant behavior. One guide put it that they seem to ignore their normally obedient and group oriented culture and morph into aggressive photographers with selective hearing. I thought the comment funny albeit a bit stereotypical...until I got to Monkey Mia. For instance, some members of all Asian tour groups would just go out into the water to take pictures of the dolphins and remain their even after repeatedly being asked by the rangers to leave the water. I was secretly proud of my husband who leaned forward, probably somewhat enabled by his Dutch cultural stereotype towards directness, and said something like, "Hey lady in the plaid hat with the video camera, that means you too."

I should explain that, for the feedings, all tourists have to leave the water to cut down on some of the activity and 'noise' in the water because for the dolphins' incredibly sensitive 'hearing', the extra people in water has the effect of making them more nervous. It also eliminates the possibility of touching the dolphins which had started to trigger the dolphins to bite in the past. Volunteers are then picked from the audience to feed.

One Japanese woman was picked from the audience to feed a dolphin. She cheerily came forward and fed the dolphin and then bent down and pet the dolphin like you would a dog even after strict instruction not to touch the animals. The immediate admonishments from the staff and the gasps from the crowd didn't seem to dampen her cheerfulness as she sloshed her way back through the shallows to the beach to be received by the rest of her tour group with pats on the back, vigorous head nods and wide smiles.

I tried to upload a video of one of the baby dolphins trying to catch his own fish, but it must have been too large of a file because it just wouldn't load. Instead, I am posting one close up picture of one of the female dolphins and another of the crowd gathered for a 7.30 am feed.