Day Two Sundarbans

While we got some good shots of the dolphins on the first day, I want to try again for more. Today we get lucky and locate a few dolphins almost at the dock. This allows me to capture some images of them with boats and the town in the background.

Ganges river dolphin near Mongla, Bangladesh (JLewis, TDRF)

Dolphins in many areas prefer habitat that happens to be heavily used by humans. Coincidently sometimes. Other times it is because the habitat is something good for the humans also (e.g., good fishing habitat). Here in the Sundarbans, the port of Mongla is at a confluence. So the area is preferred for feeding by the dolphins and is also a high boat traffic area because of the port presence. Having intense traffic where dolphins are found has been shown to be a problem for dolphins. Dolphins have to move to avoid the boats, and to do so must use more energy then they would otherwise. Avoidance movement also takes time away from feeding. So it can add up negatively in that way also. This energy loss can be significant. For example, in one population of killer whales (the largest dolphin species), they suffer 18% reduction in daily energy just from avoiding boats (Williams etal. 2006)