Hi all
A little trip down memory lane. Saw that Piccolo had a calf on the PerthNow site. That had me looking at the visiting dolphins and I noticed Nicky's name wasn't up there anymore.
Researched a little further and sadly discovered that she had died probably.
Now the memories of this very naughty dolphin. During the early days it was not unusual to feed them buckets off fish until CALM started controlling it after it was discovered that we were in fact harming the dolphins like Holey Fin, her daughter Nicky etc. Well Nicky never fully learned how to forget those "good" times.
Every time I have been back to Monkey Mia sitting for a fish and beer on the beach (ie not really trying to catch much just chilling) she would come right up to the shore with that "please feed me look".
I have been there multiple times and she never missed once to come up when we fished. I found that amazing and spoke to the rangers and researchers about it about 5 yrs ago.
I arrived in Oz aged 12, and every year until I was about 25yo we holidayed for 2 weeks there, and some off those years was the over feed ones. The Rangers but especially the Researcher (a USA professor) told me that it was probably a memory and that she could recognise faces (probably) and try and beg for food from faces she has seen before, and that use to feed her the loads of fish. I was blown away by this and she certainly became my favourite.
So I was sad to learn that she passed away, but it brought up so many memories of the times there.
Has anyone else experienced anything like this. I know RandallDF goes there now much more often than I do.
Just interested!
Neels