Being completely wild, it's crucial we keep the dolphins as safe and comfortable as possible during the nightly feed. For those planning to visit us soon, here are some handy tips for making your experience as enjoyable as possible while also ensuring the dolphins' safety.
Before entering the water...
What to wear? Be prepared to get wet! Often we will walk in to waist depth to meet the dolphins, so shorts or swimwear is ideal.
Cameras Before entering the water, please make sure you turn your still cameras off and store them in a safe location. While you are welcome to take as many photos as you like from up on the jetty, once we are on the same level as the dolphins the flash can be quite disruptive to them. Footwear Please remove your shoes and leave them up on the beach before coming down to the water's edge; if you are wearing thongs or even normal shoes, they may float away! Dive boots are fine to wear into the water.
Sunscreen Make sure that you thoroughly rinse off any sunscreens, insect repellants, moisturisers or other lotions from your skin before entering the water. Just like us, if the dolphins get these chemicals in their eyes they can be quite irritating. We do have showers provided at the end of the jetty.
Young Children Children under waist height will need to be carried into the water, even though the dolphins are extremely gentle they are quite large (up to 2.5 metres in length!) and can be pretty frightening to a young child.
Be prepared to get wet! We sometimes walk in up to our waists when meeting the dolphins.
Feeding the Dolphins
Clean Your Hands After walking down onto the beach you will be asked to line up behind one of five white buckets. These buckets contain an antibacterial solution to disinfect your hands with. Being mammals, dolphins can actually contract diseases from us, so it's really important we make sure our hands are kept clean.
Take a Fish After cleaning your hands, you may move down to the silver bucket, which contains the fish for the dolphins. Hold the fish just like an icecream - so the head is poking out toward the sky and the tail rests in your palm. The dolphins prefer to swallow the fish head first so they go down nice and smoothly.
Place your fish nice and deep under the water.
Enter the Water Once you have your fish you will be guided into the water by one of our Dolphin Care Team. When placing the fish in the water, make sure it's nice and deep - about halfway between your wrist and your elbow.
Tangalooma's Golden Rule And last but not least, please remember our golden rule. It is absolutely essential that we do not touch the dolphins. They are completely wild; human contact can both stress them out and increase the risk of disease transmission. Please enjoy this amazing experience with your eyes, not your hands.
By following these few simple steps, your dolphin feeding experience will be much more enjoyable and the dolphins will thank you too!