Tin Can Bay - Dolphin Feeding

On Friday, December 9 we took the dinghy to shore early to drop Peter off to catch the bus to Brisbane. We moored the dinghy right next to a cafe where the locals have been feeding rare Indo-Pacific Humpback dolphins since the 1950's. I just had to take a look and ran over in time to see the last fish being hand fed to one of these unusual looking dolphins. The last photo shows one of the dolphins looking very lonely! He was waiting around for more food so the guides asked everyone to leave the area so he would know there was no more food and return to sea. It was pretty incredible to see the dolphins up so close and I've copied a little bit of interesting information about these marine mammals from the Barnacles Dolphin Centre website.

History of the Tin Can Dolphins

We are often asked “how did these dolphins come to interact with the locals at Tin Can Bay”? It started back in the 1950’s when an injured dolphin beached himself on the sand at Barnacles Cafe. The locals took pity on him and started to feed him. This dolphin was well battle scarred and became known as ‘Old Scarry’. Once he was well enough Old Scarry returned to the wild but regularly returned to the bay to visit the locals and enjoy a free meal.

The second well known dolphin at Tin Can Bay was a female, also called Scarry. In 1991, there was much excitement when Scarry arrived in the bay with a calf. The local school children named this one ‘Mystique’ who continues to visit the bay on a daily basis as the third generation to carry on this tradition.

Mystique is the alpha male of his pod and is also scarred from his many battles, including a battle with a bull shark in December 2007. Once again a dolphin sought refuge in the cove at Barnacles with volunteers feeding and caring for him around the clock for 10 days. Once he was able to hunt for himself, Mystique thanked everyone with an aerial display before heading out with Patch to return to the wild.

Patch is a female member of Mystique’s pod who started to come into the Cove to feed after the disappearance of Scarry. She is thought to be around 23 years old and weigh just over 200 kg. In comparison to Mystique she has very few battle scars and she is throwing a pink colour as she ages.

More recently another young dolphin known as ‘Harmony’ began visiting regularly with Mystique. Harmony is a juvenile male thought to be about three years old. This makes the fourth generation of dolphin to feed with the locals and visitors to Tin Can Bay. Harmony is also quite scarred for one so young and appears to be holding up the family tradition of liking a good fight. Harmony is very inquisitive and likes to check out his human visitors from a distance.