Heaviside's dolphin

Heaviside's dolphin is a small, stocky dolphin that lives only in the cool coastal waters of Namibia and South Africa. It grows to a maximum of about 1.7 metres and 75 kilograms. It has a cone-shaped head with a blunt beak, a triangular fin in the middle of its back, and a striking pattern of black, grey and white.

It lives in the Benguela ecosystem along the southwest coast of Africa, where cold, food-rich water comes up from the deep. It eats fish and is listed as Near Threatened. The dolphin has a white belly patch shaped a bit like a trident.

Who was Heaviside?

The dolphin is named after a man called Haviside, a captain in the British East India Company who brought a specimen from the Cape of Good Hope to Britain in the early 1800s.

The zoologist John Edward Gray, who described the species, mistook the name for the surgeon John Heaviside, so the spelling stuck. In Namibia people also call it the Benguela dolphin.

A family from southern Africa

Heaviside's dolphin belongs to the genus Cephalorhynchus, together with the Chilean, Commerson's and Hector's dolphins. All of them live in cool coastal waters of the Southern Hemisphere.

Genetic studies suggest this group began in southern Africa and spread east around the world to New Zealand, then to South America, following the great circling current of the Southern Ocean. Because the dolphin lives so close to the coast, it is exposed to fishing nets.

On the globe

The globe places Heaviside's dolphin in the cool waters off Namibia and South Africa. Look for the black, grey and white pattern.