{"id":86889,"date":"2026-09-03T07:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T07:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/86889\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T07:03:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T07:03:12","slug":"dolphins-being-pushed-to-extinction-twice-as-fast-from-being-fed-by-tourists-experts-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/86889\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolphins being pushed to extinction twice as fast from being fed by tourists, experts reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Dolphins in Western Australia \u2013 and across the country \u2013 could be pushed toward extinction twice as fast as would otherwise have been the case due to being fed by tourists, a new study has revealed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">A Queensland University team focused on Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Bunbury as part of an international study into how dolphin population are impacted by human interaction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Honing in on Bunbury\u2019s population of about 350 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, scientists discovered that number could fall to just eight within the next century, with the lead author of the study, Dr Valeria Senigaglia, warning the scale of the fallout caused by human interaction would be significant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cFeeding dolphins has been correlated with high levels of begging behaviour, (such as) approaching vessels for handouts, which leads to inappropriate food or injury, and the removal of bait from fishing gear that could lead to entanglement,\u201d Dr Senigaglia began.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">It could also lower reproduction success and offspring survival, with Dr Senigaglia explaining: \u201cThis is because the dolphins face many other stressors from climate change, recreational watercraft, disease outbreaks and possible algae blooms, oil spills and habitat degradation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/05ff68c36bccfdd7ea3041f568f1e6eb6375b6d5.jpg\" alt=\"Feeding increases the projected decline of dolphins in WA from 85.5% to 98%.\" class=\"css-16r7l45-StyledImage en5ut4d0\"\/>Camera IconFeeding increases the projected decline of dolphins in WA from 85.5% to 98%. Credit: Dolphin Discovery Centre Bunbury<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Feeding wild dolphins is illegal in Australia but four locations \u2013 including two in WA \u2013 have permission from state regulators to provide limited amounts of food for tourism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Using 10 years of data, researchers modelled how the Bunbury population could fare over the next century under a range of scenarios to examine the differences between fed and non-fed dolphins, alongside the potential impacts of human-linked calf deaths, major oil spills, and outbreaks of morbillivirus \u2013 a highly contagious pathogen often described as the marine equivalent of measles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">While feeding was not the only contributor to the projected decline, with a morbillivirus outbreak posing an even greater threat, the study concluded it would compound the decline and double the probability of extinction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">\u201cStopping this practice might increase dolphins\u2019 resilience and ability to withstand other, more severe, stressors,\u201d Dr Senigaglia concluded.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">The research team also looked into the potential impact of Bunbury adopting conservation measures similar to those used in Scotland\u2019s Moray Firth, where protection efforts halved calf mortality and doubled local dolphin fertility by cutting out food handouts, establishing protective zones, and dialling back recreational and industrial water activity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9cqv6l-StyledPNParagraph e8utp6u0\">Researchers found that by adopting similar measures, the Bunbury dolphin population would likely increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dolphins in Western Australia \u2013 and across the country \u2013 could be pushed toward extinction twice as fast&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2005,152,335,464],"class_list":["post-86889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-perth","tag-animals","tag-news","tag-perth","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}