Witness accuses boater of endangering dolphin pod off Kaua’i

By ‘A’ali’i Dukelow

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    KAUAI, Hawaii (KITV) — While hiking on Saturday morning, Kapa’a resident Nancy Andrade said a picturesque view of Polihale State Park quickly turned to horror after she saw a boater doing doughnuts around a pod of dolphins.

“It made me sick,” Andrade said. “I was just afraid that since the boat was so close to the dolphins in that pod that the rutters on the boat would just shred them if they got too close to it.”

Andrada said she hikes the area every few months and this was not the first time she has seen boaters misbehave.

Several, she claimed, drive directly towards dolphins. Once, Andrade said she saw a boat leaking oil near a pod.

“That kind of worried me because I know they come up through that oil spill or whatever and get it on their skin,” Andrade added.

Thinking quickly, Andrade snapped photos of the incident, and her grandson posted them on social media to get the word out.

“They’re probably thinking that it’s fun for them and a lot of people saying from the comments that we’ve been reading that the dolphins were having fun with it, but you don’t actually know what’s happening underneath the water,” Andrade’s grandson, Tapa Andrade, said.

Tapa said he boats in Polihale waters about five times every summer, and each time, he has seen dolphins with cuts on them. He suspects those gashes are injuries from run-ins with unruly boaters.

“I usually see at least one about every time I go down there,” Tapa said.

“So you can kind of tell that they have been in accidents with boats before it’s kind of showing that it is happening, and it’s not something that hasn’t happened before.”

Melissa Price, an assistant professor at the University of Hawai’i specializing in wildlife management, said close encounters with humans often stress animals, making them too tired to reproduce.

Keeping a safe distance, Price said, could help preserve the dolphin population.

“Especially as we have tourists returning to the islands and we have increase pressure on our systems and things open up again, it’s really important that we reevaluate the pressure that we’re placing on our systems and we think about what we want to have around for the long term,” Price said.

“Unlike Disneyland, Hawai’i is a living system right, the animals, the plants, our trails, forests, they all need time to rest and recover.”

The Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) recommends keeping a 150-foot distance from dolphins.

Anyone with information on the incident can call the DLNR at 643-3567.

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