The University of Pretoria’s (UP’s) Mammal Research Institute (MRI) Whale Unit, based in Hermanus outside Cape Town, is playing a leading role in a new global network aimed at galvanising conservation action for the increasingly vulnerable Indian Ocean humpback dolphin.

Dr Shanan Atkins, a post-doctoral researcher at the MRI Whale Unit, is coordinating the Indian Ocean Humpback Dolphin Conservation Network (HuDoNet), a network of 77 scientists and conservationists from 17 countries along the western Indian Ocean and Arabian Seas who are collaborating on research that provides evidence for positive conservation decisions and actions.

“Most people may have never heard of Indian Ocean humpback dolphins,” Dr Atkins explains. “As South Africa’s most endangered marine mammal, they are shy and elusive, and inhabit a narrow strip of water on our coastline. Their range extends from South Africa to other countries in southern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, to western India and Sri Lanka, as well as islands like Madagascar and Mayotte. Many of these 23 countries are low-income countries.”

In most places, humpback dolphin populations are small and declining because of their proximity to highly populated coastlines. “They are affected by human activities that occur on land, in fresh water and in the ocean. The dolphins die in fishing nets, their habitats are altered by port and harbour construction, coastal development, dredging, and land reclamation. They are susceptible to pollution, such as chemicals and loud underwater noise,” Dr Atkins says. She adds that these activities threaten the survival of the dolphins in ways that are challenging to understand and measure, but likely to be impactful.

HuDoNet was launched this year as a way of fostering and facilitating collaborative research and management efforts, and sharing expertise to support conservation initiatives for the humpback dolphins across the member organisations’ geographical range. The University of Pretoria, through its MRI Whale Unit, along with the University of St Andrews (Scotland) and Zayed University (United Arab Emirates), were among the founding partners.

Action scope and research challenges

Dr Els Vermeulen, Senior Lecturer and Research Manager at the MRI Whale Unit, which forms part of UP’s Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, works alongside Dr Atkins and the other members of this global network. “HuDoNet is not a research project alone – the ultimate goal is to collaborate and jointly create a conservation action plan for the species across its range; to collaborate, work with governments and share resources, knowledge and experience,” she says.

“HuDoNet’s goal goes beyond research – it is to use research to inform precise and accurate conservation actions, and to raise public awareness of the plight of this endangered dolphin.”

Across the range of countries involved, the dolphin researchers face various challenges:

Ketki Jog, a PhD candidate from Australia’s James Cook University who is working in India, reports that, “Our major challenge is a lack of resources.”

In South Africa, Dr Vermeulen says, “Due to the elusive nature of these dolphins, data collection is challenging and limited by a lack of resources.”

Other challenges include a lack of data, limited technical support, a lack of awareness of the species and its poor conservation status, and a lack of action by the authorities. “It is so difficult to get the authorities involved in conservation matters,” says Yusuf Bohadi, a researcher at Kuwait University.

Local research

The UP researchers’ primary contribution to HuDoNet is centred around their work on SouSa, a national consortium working for the conservation of the species, also under Dr Vermeulen’s lead. She describes the group’s fieldwork as entailing predominantly small-boat work for photo-identification and biopsy sampling of humpback dolphins along the coast in Richards Bay (KwaZulu-Natal) and the southern Cape coast.

“I am proud that the MRI Whale Unit is playing a leading role in the establishment of a collaborative network across 23 countries,” Dr Vermeulen says. “It is gratifying to help galvanise collaboration and sharing, and to provide inspiration to the younger generation. As part of our UP team, I have been working on the establishment of this network for more than two years, and I am proud that we are at a stage where we have launched and are actively working together across 77 members from very different cultural backgrounds, with the sole purpose of better conserving these endangered dolphins.”