Shy and with fins “like Mickey Mouse ears”: this is the unknown Chilean dolphin

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The first time Carla Christie saw the Chilean dolphin (Cephalorhynchus eutropia), the second smallest in the world, was in 1999, on Niebla beach, near Valdivia, in southern Chile, while she was cleaning up coastal garbage as a student of marine biology from the Universidad Austral: “That's when I knew they existed.”

It was a small group of about seven endemic cetaceans feeding on the coast.

“We started running along, trying to follow them,” she says excitedly.

They didn't jump or do “anything very spectacular,” she remembers.

“But I saw them.

It was shocking.

"They were there!"

There are still dolphins there, perhaps the same ones you once saw, but with their descendants.

He recognized them for their “super particular characteristic: the rounded dorsal fin, like Mickey Mouse's ear,” details the person who has been popularizing it for 13 years.

In the water they look “small, because they are at most 1.6 meters tall, like me,” he laughs.

Distant relatives, such as the southern dolphin, reach 2.2 meters.

These cetaceans are shy and elusive, according to those who study them.

It is difficult to see them and, although they do not make large migrations, the sea is still immense.

“When you think of a dolphin, you think of a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), jumping, kind of happy and smiling,” he says.

“The Chilean is less acrobatic than others.”

He is reserved.

In 2001, there were records of Chilean dolphins on the island of Chiloé.

The locals saw him often.

There, in the bay of Yaldad, a small fishing village near Quellón, Sonja Heinrich, a German biologist, arrived.

She was doing her PhD and needed assistants.

Carla Christie joined in to study these cetaceans on the nearby islands of Coldita, Laitec, Cailin and San Pedro.

Although she was only there for a few years, the study has continued for more than two decades, and has expanded around Calbuco, Puerto Montt and some southern channels.

Biologist Carla Christie in front of a mural that includes the Chilean dolphin, among other marine species of the southern country.Carla Christie

The biologist did her university thesis on the social life of these dolphins, how they are structured;

she concluded that they live in groups that “constantly mix and separate.”

They flow.

Later, she participated in environmental education in rural southern schools.

She realized how unknown the Chilean dolphin was.

Not even the people who lived there, so close to this cetacean, knew of its uniqueness, she says.

“They didn't know that it is super special, that it is only from Chile, and that it is different in morphology.”

Then, he took a turn towards communication, scientific dissemination.

He completed a master's degree, and today he gives talks, he has been part of the CNN documentary Patagonia Extraordinaria, narrated in English by Pedro Pascal, he wrote the book

El delfín chileno

, and is preparing another for 2024 with the publishing house LibroVerde, in which he recounts his experience with the species.

“Village” dolphins

The best way to study the dolphin — which can be 20 meters from the shore — is by going into the sea, in a zodiac, an inflatable boat suitable for small spaces, which is not so expensive and does not make a noise that affects cetaceans.

“They really like well-protected areas, where there is a very strong influence of rivers or estuaries, small, closed bays,” details marine biologist Luis Bedriñana.

In these places, they do not compete for food with others such as the southern dolphin, nor do they encounter potential predators such as orcas.

The expeditions are near islands or coasts, in channels and fjords, whether in Chiloé or other places.

It lives from the regions of Valparaíso to Magallanes;

more than 3,000 kilometers of coastline to the end of the continent.

However, from Puerto Montt to the north there are fewer, according to Bedriñana.

There, the coast is a “straight line,” she says, and there is “less habitat available”;

while the southern zone is dismembered and becomes “very complex”;

much more suitable for the species.

“If we were to make a metaphor with human beings, it is as if they lived in small towns and not in big cities,” he compares.

“Going through the entire distribution range to Cape Horn, finding each of those little places, is very difficult.”

In September, the researcher led the first large estimate of these dolphins in northern Patagonia, which he estimated at about 2,000 individuals.

A group of Chilean dolphins.Carla Christie

But twenty years ago, in Chiloé, they didn't even have the internet for the daily weather forecast, Christie recalls.

In the south of Chile, even if it is summer, you go warm before the sea breeze.

Sometimes it rains or hails.

The wind is key.

The weather is unpredictable.

“We don't have a boat with a roof, it's outdoors,” says the biologist.

The days last up to seven hours if the weather is good, and the dolphins “cooperate” by showing themselves.

Those are the good days, when they go out into the field.

The “very bad” ones can be entire weeks without going out due to a lot of wind;

then they lock themselves in to analyze the collected data.

The navigations include encounters with seagulls, South American terns, lily cormorants and quetru or vapor duck, “very chubby and doesn't fly,” he specifies;

in addition to mammals such as sea lions, and native otters, both chungungos on the coast, and huillines near rivers;

and even cetaceans from other families, such as spiny porpoises, deeper divers.

To study dolphins, individuals must be recognized through photo-identification of their dorsal fin, the one most visible on the surface.

There they analyze their distinctive marks, made among themselves or by fishing nets, loose ends or propellers.

“This way we have identified 60 individuals and we know their life stories, without following them,” explains the biologist, as if there is a female with a calf.

Christie has seen indelible scenes.

Dolphins sleep with half of their brain active to come up to breathe.

They are dreams of minutes.

“When they rest, they do so floating and, if you see them from a distance, they look like a log,” she describes.

“It's super cool to hear them breathe while sleeping, slower, softer.”

In groups, of two or three, no more.

“It's great to see them in their natural behavior.”

Underwater dangers

For the biologist, the shyness that characterizes this species is its way of protecting itself.

She thinks that in more solitary areas they would have behavior more similar to other cetaceans.

At the moment, “there is very little information about the Chilean dolphin,” she admits.

And much of what is known is from the two-decade study in Chiloé, where there is a lot of traffic from small tourist boats, fishermen and salmon farms.

The genus Cephalorhynchus, to which it belongs, is made up of four species that live mainly in Argentina, Namibia and New Zealand.

They are similar: small, elusive and coastal towns.

“But if one compares all the estimates of its cousins, this one has much lower densities,” highlights Bedriñana.

By preferring well-protected areas, he warns, their habitat coincides with activities such as salmon farming and mussel farming: “Especially in Chiloé, they are among a lot of ropes, garbage and maritime traffic associated with aquaculture,” he describes, and the companies salmon “are by far the most abundant fleet in northern Patagonia.”

Chilean dolphins play in front of a beach full of garbage.Carla Christie

Veterinarian Cayetano Espinosa, academic at the Andrés Bello University and scientific coordinator of Yaqu Pacha Chile, the center in charge of the study in Chiloé, warns of other “stressors that are not necessarily lethal” and that are difficult to evaluate, but that cause these populations are small, such as noise and chemical pollution.

“There are water conditions that are more anoxic, with greater organic matter and less oxygen, and predispose to non-optimal conditions that favor the growth of bacteria and microalgae,” he warns.

This, for example, affects your skin and immune system.

High water temperatures, influenced by climate change, is another worrying factor.

Just a couple of extra degrees “changes the water conditions a lot,” warns Espinosa.

It affects, for example, “the reproduction rate of algae, the amount of oxygen and food for dolphins.”

“Everything that affects your diet will affect your health,” she points out.

The job of the Yaqu Pacha researchers is to know the perception of the people who live with this dolphin.

And it varies quite a bit.

In towns like Queilen, a Chilote island, they know it, differentiate it from other species and protect it, being closely associated with tourism.

On the other hand, in places like Queule, more focused on other areas, “they tend to be less careful and not value it.”

There are parts where they are still used as bait for crabs, like in 1980. And there are even people who eat them, although it is not common.

Christie recognizes that cell phones and social networks have helped cetaceans become better known in Chile.

She says that people are no longer so surprised to hear that there are blue whales or orcas off the Chilean coast.

But she continues with her crusade to popularize the Chilean dolphin and dreams that, one day, it will become the image of a banknote.

“It would be super interesting to show it in a more common and national symbol,” she says.

She is now studying a doctorate in communication, focused on marine education: “It is important to encourage this connection with nature and the sea, which is often scary or alien,” because infinite life hides under water.