To warm up, I halfheartedly swim laps parallel to shore, but the ill-fitting rented wetsuit restricts my movement, so I give up and follow Dillon farther out. As the water deepens and darkens beneath me, I start to feel guilty about seeking contact with a wild dolphin, given what I know about the harm it can do. Still, the chances of seeing Fungie up close are slim.
The time to avoid him may have been decades ago, when he first arrived in Dingle Harbor. The safest possible approach to a new solitary is to head off habituation before it happens—and perhaps even try to reintegrate the solitary animal with its own species. Eventually, he spent more time with other dolphins. Once an animal is used to humans and starts seeking their company, cutting off interaction may not always be the answer. Luna, the killer whale who lingered in Nootka Sound, relentlessly approached boats for games and attention, even as Fisheries and Oceans Canada tried to keep the whale and people apart.
When a solitary cetacean is perhaps gaining needed social fulfillment from human contact, blocking further interaction could be harmful, researchers wrote last year in a veterinary journal. Instead, they recommend measures like limiting the number of people who can interact with the animal at the same time, as well as education efforts that teach people not to touch blowholes, not to offer food, and how to recognize agitation.
More information could have saved the swimmer from a devastating injury and protected Dusty from unnecessary stress. Ultimately, each solitary cetacean needs a unique approach that takes into account the extent of its habituation, its personality, local legislation, and other factors. Lone animals can fall through the cracks, leaving their protection in the hands of nonprofits and community members. In some places, official guardians watch over a resident cetacean.
On Providenciales, an island in the Caribbean, a permanent guardian watched over JoJo the dolphin, entertaining him and protecting him from people. But individual guardians can sometimes cause problems if they become possessive and emotionally dependent on the animal, says Bossley.
At Monkey Mia Reserve in Australia, where a group of dolphins regularly accepts food from people, park rangers supervise huge crowds. The Dingle community, proud of their mascot and enjoying a thriving dolphin tourist industry, protects him.
Meanwhile, the community of swimmers has long opted for information sharing over possessiveness, passing on their hands-off swimming culture to successive generations of curious swimmers, like me. Dingle has achieved some of what researchers say a management plan should include: cooperation between boat owners, public education, and community involvement.
Then, suddenly, Dillon squeals and kicks her bodyboard into a spin. A dorsal fin and gleaming back arch out of the water as Fungie circles her neatly once, less than a meter away, and disappears. We wait a while longer, watching him surface farther away. Elated with our small glimpse, we head back to shore. As we struggle to pull dry clothes onto our clammy skin in the light drizzle, we see Fungie pop up nearer the beach. His visit this morning feels like a courtesy—a tip of the hat before vanishing again to finish his breakfast.
But despite his carefully maintained distance, even Fungie faces risks as he ages. Fungie appeared to be young, though sexually mature, when he arrived in Dingle, which would make him at least 45 years old today. Bottlenose dolphins in the wild live 17 years on average, although captive dolphins have lived as long as 50 years. As time passes, his reflexes may slow and his hearing may diminish, says Margaux Dodds, cofounder of Marine Connection, a nonprofit that campaigns to protect cetaceans globally, including solitary ones.
At the height of summer, as many as four or five cluster in the water, and Fungie is in the habit of following all of them, most of the time—meaning he may not be resting or feeding enough.
After public complaint, the Irish National Parks and Wildlife Service reminded Dingle boat operators that, in Irish waters, dolphins are legally protected from disturbance, including from tourism. But no one has been issued a fine or formal warning, and prevailing sentiment in Dingle is that Fungie looks out for himself pretty well. Some boat companies have already branched into ecotours.
As solitaries continue to find their way into the hearts of coastal communities, there is a chance to put our tendency to anthropomorphize them to good use. Human impact on the oceans can be difficult to comprehend in the abstract, but solitary cetaceans can make the stakes sharply visible, and give them a name, a face, and a personality. Solitaries may be more likely to suffer brutal deaths, but all dolphins share their vulnerabilities, Bossley says.
Researchers often track pods for generations and know individuals well, offering ample opportunities for storytelling if those details are communicated to the public. On my final morning in Dingle, I set out for one last swim with Dillon and Massett. A freak surge of jellyfish litters the shore and I try not to think about the wetsuit tear over my ankle.
The October morning is bright and crisp and the water so icy that when I duck beneath, I come up gasping. I float on my back, spinning again to take in the view, while Massett and Dillon rest on their bodyboards and chat.
This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine. It's not every day that an entire town launches a search operation for a dolphin. But Fungie, a year-mainstay of Dingle Harbour in County Kerry, is more than just an animal to the locals.
The bottlenose dolphin, who was first sighted in the s, is the focus of an entire tourism industry and a beloved part of the texture of the town, which touches the Atlantic Ocean on Ireland's south-west coast. But his disappearance last Tuesday prompted an extensive search that was paused on Monday due to bad weather. Fungie made his first appearance in the area in the autumn of He said there was "a bit of curiosity" but the general consensus from the old fishermen at the harbour was that "there's storm on the way - he'll be gone next week".
But he wasn't gone the following week. He stayed and he stayed. In , he was named the oldest solitary dolphin in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records. Nuala Moore, an extreme swimmer from Dingle, described Fungie as her "training buddy". She started swimming aged four so for her entire life "he has been there". Nuala has particularly appreciated him over the last 10 years when she has been involved in long cold water swimming events.
Local fisherman John Brosnan views Fungie as a lifesaver. Fourteen years ago, Brosnan was suffering from a heart condition, but didn't know it. A French cardiologist who'd come to see Fungie ended up diagnosing Brosnan's condition, and later treated him for it in France. Making a fist with his hand, Brosnan tapped his heart.
Local children hang out on the Fungie statue which was placed in Dingle town in Memories of Fungie were flowing as the crowds gathered throughout the afternoon. Bob Tait, a retired head chef in the merchant navy and a Glasgow native, said he came to Dingle on a "five-day holiday" 27 years ago but never left. The whale and dolphin enthusiast said that Fungie played a part in that decision. It's no surprise that the community is looking for closure.
The wake, a sacred Irish tradition, allows people to bind together, to collectively overcome the grief that the death of one individual brings. And in this rural county, where the local radio station airs the daily deaths announcement four times a day to listeners, that tradition still runs deep. The memorial might be the closest they can get.
Organizers estimated Sunday that about 1, people had turned out to remember Fungie. Dingle parish priest Michael Moynihan blesses the boat and its passengers with holy water. Bridget Flannery stands in front of local children's Fungie artwork. In the afternoon, a local priest and a Church of Ireland minister boarded one of the vessels, offering a prayer at sea.
Dingle parish priest Michael Moynihan said he was happy to read the blessing for Fungie from the highest point on the boat. Prayers were also offered for the victims of the Covid pandemic. Back at the entrance of Dingle Harbor, Jamie Flannery, Jimmy's son, greeted visitors as they looked through a collection of testimonies written about Fungie, as well as drawings done by school children across the peninsula.
They're the last generation that would have known the dolphin, and Jamie Flannery, like the greater community, is committed to keeping those memories alive.
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