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CHARITY BLOG
WDCS AMAZED BY EXTRA-FINNED DOLPHIN
WDCS photo shows a dolphin off Cornwall coast with an extra dorsal fin
Damaging or losing a dorsal fin is not normally good news for dolphins, but for ‘Snooky’ a bottlenose living off the Cornwall coast, it has given him the ability to manoeuvre at faster speeds and more agilely than most other dolphins.
‘Snooky’ is not one of the many victims of ship strikes or entanglement in nets that regularly leave the dolphins without their precious dorsal fins, but instead similar experiences for his ancestors have led ‘Snooky’ to be born with two dorsal fins.
WDCS director of science, Mark Simmonds, explained how this has occurred: “We believe that selection pressure on dolphins in recent years may have caused several individuals to develop a remarkable second dorsal fin. This is a rare and never previously photographed example of Lamarckian Inheritance, Those dolphins that survive strikes and entanglement, have fathered a new generation of bi-finned dolphins like ‘Snooky’.”
The discovery came as a shock not only because it was unprecedented but because the researchers had been following ‘Snooky’s pod for a while before they discovered his particularly unique trait.
WDCS were undertaking the routine task of monitoring a pod of dolphins off the coast of Cornwall. Among them was ‘Snooky’, a large male known for his extreme speed, agility and mischievous behaviour. But one set of photos taken recently by their research team revealed captured ‘Snooky’ jumping out of the water, showing his miraculous extra dorsal fin.
“It is something really unusual, said WDCS researcher Philip Charles. In nearly 20 years of watching and studying dolphins I have never seen a double-finned bottlenose.”
“This has come as somewhat of a surprise, as we know of no other actual sighting of a double-finned dolphin anywhere in the world”, said Simmonds. “We have been monitoring various species as part of our Species Guide project, a comprehensive, free on-line resource that lists details about a vast range of whales and dolphin species, and when we first saw pictures of ‘Snooky’ we were both amazed and very excited.”
