Whale watching - whale and dolphin encounters around Levuka, Fiji Islands

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Spinnerdolpins in the Fiji Islands
(Stenella longirostris)

The spinner dolphin (Stenella longirostris) is the most common dolphin seen in Fiji Waters, but also throughout the worlds off-shore tropical waters.
Spinner dolphins are very playfull and often display acrobatic leaps and spin through the air.
It is a member of the family Delphinidae of toothed whales. that migrate through, or visit on yearly migratory patterns.

Spinner dolphins are often seen in very large schools of many hundert, even thousands of animals.
The spinner dolphin often feed in the moorning or evening hours. Their diet consists mainly on small fish and squids. When hunting they reach depghts of 300 meters.
Spinner dolphins themself are prey to sharks, killer whale, the false killer whales.
Even they may accasionally be preyed on, we often see them around groups of pilot whales of false killer whales. They also accompany humpbackwhales.

Thousands of Spinner dolphins have in the past been killed by the purse seine fishing industry for tuna, as often the dolphins feed on tuna such as skipjack. It used to be a common practice then to run the net arround the dolphins in order to catch the tuna underneath.

In Fiji are a some current onservation projects, that study spinner dolphins. Some operators offer dolphin watching tours such as Takalana Bay near Fiji's Moon reef.