Who: Photographer Peter Murphy

Where: Monkey Mia, Shark Bay World Heritage Area, Western Australia

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Why: Peter Murphy spent some weeks in Western Australia photographing the beautiful Shark Bay World Heritage Area for a planned visitors’ center. Visit Peter Murphy’s blog for more panoramas of the area and Australia in general.

What: Wild Dolphins
“The most well known attractions of the Shark Bay World Heritage Area are the wild dolphins of Monkey Mia”, explains Murphy. Most mornings between 7 am and midday, four females and their offspring visit the beach to receive fish from the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) rangers. Visitors to Monkey Mia are able to enter the shallows and assist in the feeding under the supervision of the rangers.

Shark Bay, a World Heritage Site, is located on the most western point of the coast of Australia lying 800km north of Perth, the capital city of Western Australia. With an area of more than two million hectares - over one million hectares are protected in marine parks, marine nature reserves, terrestrial nature reserves and National parks - the Shark Bay region represents a meeting point of three major climatic regions and forms a transition zone between two major botanical provinces.

The Shark Bay region is an area of outstanding zoological importance. Isolation of a variety of habitats on and around islands and peninsulas has produced fascinating marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Tiger sharks and dolphins are abundant and humpback whales use the Bay as a staging post in their migration along the coast. Killer whales and southern right whales have also been sighted. Green and loggerhead turtles are found in Shark Bay near their southern limits. The turtles come to nest on the beaches of Dirk Hartog Island and Peron Peninsula. Dirk Hartog is the most important nesting site for loggerheads in Western Australia. Six species of sea snake have also been recorded.

Interesting Dolphin Facts:
What is the difference between a dolphin and a porpoise?
Porpoises are closely related to dolphins and are in the same superfamily, Delphinoidea. However, porpoises are smaller than dolphins, have no beaks, and the teeth are spade-shaped, whereas dolphin teeth are conical-shaped. In addition, porpoises breed faster than dolphins but they do not live as long. The size of the brain, relative to body size is smaller in porpoises than it is in dolphins.

Do dolphins sleep?
Dolphins sleep by shutting down half their brain at a time. This semi-conscious state is necessary because breathing is under voluntary control. For this reason, dolphins cannot be anaesthetized. They would stop breathing. During sleep, dolphins frequently close one eye, and spend a lot of time 'hanging' or 'floating' at the surface. Dolphins spend approximately one third of the day sleeping. They may sleep for several minutes, or for over two hours at a time. Scientists currently debate whether dolphins experience rapid-eye-movement (REM) or dream sleep.

Do dolphins have language?
This depends on how you define language. Dolphins do have a very complex communication system. Scientists are still trying to work out what the variety of whistles, clicks, squawks, squeals, barks, and other sounds mean. A significant portion of the dolphin's extraordinarily large brain is devoted to acoustic processing, which suggests that communication is an extremely important feature of dolphin life.

At other bottlenose dolphin research sites it has been shown that each individual dolphin develops a distinctive "signature whistle" during the first year of life. This whistle remains stable over time. The apparent function of this whistle is similar to a name. The dolphins use these whistles to announce or identify themselves to others. This is obviously very important in the aquatic environment, where visibility is limited and dolphins join and leave each other frequently. Furthermore, sound travels five times faster in water than in air, making sound a very efficient means of communication. Many dolphin sounds are produced well out of the range that humans can hear.

How: Murphy used an 8mm Nikkor on a Fuji S2 for this reportage-style handheld panorama.

For more facts about dolphins and how you can contribute to the project, visit the wonderfully informative Monkey Mia Research Foundation website, from which much of the above text was gathered, and the local beach webcam.
Email: pmurphy4[at]bigpond[dot]net[dot]au