The Mandurah Dolphin Research Project commenced studying the dolphins in the Peel-Harvey estuary and adjacent coastal waters in January 2016.
Since then we have discovered a community of currently 82 dolphins that reside in the Mandurah waterways year round.
We have witnessed the birth of 18 new calves, three of them in 2018, into the community and sadly said goodbye to seven individuals of different ages.
One of the dolphins that passed this year was an adult female, Frill, who had gotten stranded somewhere in the estuary and got badly burnt.
One of the unique characteristics of the Mandurah community of dolphins is the frequency at which they are observed stranded alive.
Since 1985 there has been at least 36 live stranding involving approximately 60 individuals. In the current dolphin community we have 19 individuals that have stranded at least once in their lifetime.
Zero-one, for example, has stranded at least three times.
He was freeze-branded by the government department during a live stranding of ten dolphins in 1990 in Lake Goegrup.
Seven years later in 1997 he was found stranded again with five other dolphins in the same spot.
In late 2017 Zero-one was stuck in a shallow pool of water between sand banks with another dolphin, Fourteen, at the southern end of Harvey Estuary.
The pair was stuck and monitored for three days before making it out successfully on their own.
The Mandurah Dolphin Research Project welcomes the mobile application, Dolphin Watch, this month to engage the local community in monitoring the dolphin community.
Especially during the hot summer months with extreme low tides, the more eyes we have on shallow areas of the Peel-Harvey waterways, particularly along the rivers and lakes, the better chance we have of assisting any dolphins that may become stuck.