Richard Robinson Underwater Photojournalist

Hector’s dolphins are the small-town kiwi of the dolphin world, says Rochelle Constantine, a cetacean biologist with the University of Auckland. “Their average range is around 50 kilometres.”
Much of Constantine’s work focuses on genetics, a powerful tool for analysing populations and figuring out where these animals live. Genetics has reinforced what had long been suspected by researchers—that, due to Hector’s dolphins’ tendency to keep it local, the groups of dolphins around our coast are largely isolated from one another.
Each cluster of dolphins in the South Island, for example, carries a different genetic stamp. Two populations on the Kaikōura coast, less than 40 kilometres apart, are separated by the deep incursion of the Kaikōura Canyon, and as a result have different genetics.
“That’s why it’s kind of tricky talking about ‘the Hector’s dolphin’,” says Constantine, “because they are quite different.”
Shot on assignment for New Zealand Geographic Issue: 183 September / October 2023.
Read the Feature: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-special-case-of-our-smallest-dolphins/
Photograph Richard Robinson © 2023.
Rights managed image. No Reproduction without prior written permission.