Not a rare dolphin

The Herald reports:

New Zealand freediver William Trubridge has backed a campaign urging fast food giant McDonald’s to stop sourcing its fish from New Zealand waters after the leak of a report which revealed the unreported capture of a rare dolphin.

The leaked report of a 2013 investigation by the Ministry for Primary Industries, titled Operation Achilles, followed the unreported capture of a Hector’s Dolphin, a close relative of the critically endangered Maui’s dolphin.

This is just the latest part of a ten year campaign by a German group targeting the NZ fishing industry.

And the media report the propaganda without any critical analysis.

The Maui’s dolphin is very endangered. Only around 55 remain.

But that is not the dolphin which was caught in 2013. So they are calling for a boycott of all NZ fisheries, because a non-endangered dolphin was caught by accident three years ago.

Mr Trubridge, who earlier this month broke two world records by diving to 124m and back on a single breath, is supporting the campaign.

“What decent human being or company could possibly buy fish from an industry that fights for the right to kill every last Maui’s dolphin?

But no Maui dolphin has been caught or captured let alone killed in recent years. The area they are in is highly protected. And the industry is not fighting for any right to catch or kill any dolphins, let alone Maui.

• Maui’s and Hector’s dolphins are the smallest and rarest marine dolphins on earth and live only in New Zealand.

• Maui’s dolphins have declined from an estimated 1800 in the 1970s to less than 50 as a result of fishing.

• The closely related Hector’s dolphin is also threatened, with several populations numbering fewer than 100 individuals.

Now note they talk of Hector as having several populations of under 100. Makes you think that perhaps there are just 400 or 500 Hector’s dolphins in total. In fact there are around 7,400. Why did the NZ Herald not bother to tell us the total number? I presume because they just repeat the data fed to them by the German group.