World Dolphin Day highlights threats and conservation efforts
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Marine conservation nonprofit Sea Shepherd established World Dolphin Day in 2022 to raise awareness about the dangers facing dolphins.
The IUCN recently assessed nine dolphin species and several populations as critically endangered or endangered. Lahille’s bottlenose dolphin, a subspecies found along the coasts of southern Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, was reclassified as endangered in late 2025 because fewer than 400 individuals remain, largely due to accidental deaths in gillnet fisheries.
Investigators with the Environmental Justice Foundation found illegal drift net fishing still occurs in the Alboran Sea between Morocco and Spain, despite a ban intended to protect dolphins, whales, sharks, and turtles. The EU plans to propose stronger international fishing rules to address this in November 2026. In Singapore, a resort suspended its captive breeding program and stopped capturing wild dolphins for its oceanarium.
The facility currently houses over 20 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, many originally captured from the Solomon Islands in 2008 and 2009. Researchers also observed bottlenose dolphins off Australia’s east coast using a sea snail shell to trap fish, a technique previously only known to occur in western Australia, suggesting the behavior developed independently in both regions.
