Kenya

Extent of whale and dolphin watching

Kenya is best known for its terrestrial wildlife – a dream destination for safaris to see the ‘Big 5’ in the iconic landscape of savannah lands dotted with Acacia trees. Few tourists associate Kenya with marine life or dolphin watching, but the country does, in fact, have an active and growing dolphin watching industry and a burgeoning whale watching industry.

Kenya’s first commercial dolphin watcthing tours were offered in the 1990s, concentrating in the central and southern coastal areas that included the  Malindi Watamu National Marine Park and Reserve (MWMPA- gazetted in 1968), and the Kisite -Mpunguti National Marine Park and Reserve (KMMPA-  gazetted in 1978).  Both areas were traditionally fishing towns until tourism took over as the main source of revenue in the 1970s, when nature based tourism generated more than 1.6 million USD per year and became the main attraction for nearly 30,000 tourists in the KMMPA¹. Marine tourism here initially focused on diving and snorkeling, but a number of fishermen, who were accustomed to spending hours on the water and carefully watching for signs of productivity and good fishing, realized that they could supplement their income by using their vessels to take tourists to see the resident populations of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins they knew to frequent the area. In both areas, dolphin watching took off, and as of 2017, there were 40 boat operators offering dolphin watching and snorkeling activities for domestic and international tourists in the MWMPA and 10-12 in the KMMPA.

Target species, peak times of year and locations:

Dolphin watching operations in Kenya focus on Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins and humpback dolphins, which are both resident year-round. Spinner dolphins are seasonally present in some locations, and humpback whales are known to migrate along Kenya’s coast between August and October each year.

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Regulations and guidelines

All wildlife in Kenya is protected by the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act 2013, which prohibits any activity that is likely to have adverse effects on the target species. The 2012 Kenya Fisheries Act and the 2015 Fisheries Management and Development Bill state that no person should engage in fishing for marine mammals, and if any marine mammal is caught either intentionally or unintentionally it should be released immediately and returned to the waters from which it was taken with the least possible injury. Infractions can be punished with fines not exceeding five hundred thousand shilling or a term of imprisonment.

Due to the rapid growth of the dolphin tourism industry between 2004 and 2006, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), in collaboration with international agencies, developed a voluntary code of conduct in 2007 to mitigate possible impacts from the dolphin-watching activity. This code recommended:

• Boat operators to keep a minimum distance of 100m from dolphins ;
• A limit of two boats at any given time around the animals;
• A limit of 20 minutes with the same dolphin group at a time;
• Illustrated best practice approach angles and speeds;
• A prohibition of swimming with dolphins.

While the code was based on codes for other dolphin populations around the world, and lacked scientific information from the targeted population, studies indicate that this voluntary code of conduct is helping to mitigate some of the impacts from tour boats^2,3.

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Research on whale and dolphin watching in Kenya

Between 2006 and 2010, a long-term, year-round study was conducted on the dolphins of the Kisite -Mpunguti National Marine Park and Reserve (KMMPA). The study yielded the first population estimate for dolphins in Kenya, as well as some alarming results: an increased presence of dolphin watching vessels was associated with a decrease in dolphin numbers in the protected area.  In March 2006, the highest number of dolphin tours in the park’s history  (451 boats and 6,246 tourists) was statistically linked to the departure of 78% of the local dolphin population from the study area².  While seasonal temperature changes also appeared to have an effect on local dolphin numbers, the presence or absence of tourism vessels had the largest influence on dolphin numbers and shifts in and out of the study area².  Researchers also found that the presence of boats changed dolphins’ behaviour, with less time spent traveling and more time spent diving, short-term effects that did not appear to have a significant impact at the current level of interaction, but could lead to cumulative long-term impacts, particularly if tourism activities were to expand³. The implementation of the 2007 code of conduct has been shown to mitigate some of the impacts detected by the tourist boats during periods of high intensity^2,3.

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