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Marine mammals, such as whales and seals, would have been a common sight around Sydney Harbour in the early 1800s. Watkin Tench, an English officer in Sydney in 1790, gives a vivid account of a large whale, probably a Humpback, which surfaced below a small boat killing causing three of the four men on board to drown.
Whaling took a heavy toll on large whales such as the Southern Right Whale Eubalaena australis and Humpback Whale Megaptera novaeangliae before it was banned in the 1970s. Fortunately Humpback and Southern Right Whale numbers are now on the increase and it is possible to see them once again off the coast of Sydney.
The other marine mammal that is still seen fairly regularly around the harbour area is the Bottlenose Dolphin Tursiops truncatus. This relatively common species was known to have two different 'forms' an inshore and offshore that are now recognised as two distinct species, the Bottlenose Dolphin, Tursiops Truncatus, and the Long-beaked Bottlenose Dolphin, Tursiops aduncus. A range of other marine mammals from this area have made it into the Australian Museum collections (generally found dead). Many of these occur outside the harbour or are occasional visitors to the harbour. These include; Common Dolphin, Risso's Dolphin, Pygmy Sperm Whale, Sperm Whale, Killer Whale, Spotted Dolphin, Australian Fur-Seal, Leopard Seal, Crab-eater Seal, Southern Elephant Seal (which collided with the HMAS Brisbane in 1996) and Dugong.
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