AN UNUSUAL AND REMARKABLE VIEW: DOLPHIN DISSECTION

The dolphin dissection marked one of the most interesting exhibitions at this year’s Scifest. According to the Scifest ticket office all the tickets were sold out. The demonstration took place at SAIAB - an official Scifest venue called ‘Water World’. People came in numbers to witness this rare event. Dr Stephanie Plön, a marine mammal scientist based at Bay world in Port Elizabeth, performed the dissection. Plön says scientists usually use stranded animals which they dissect for research; “Sometimes we dissect the animals at the beach because they are too big,” she said. She added that it was fortunate that they found this small dolphin just before Scifest because on average they only get about 20 stranded animals per year along the entire Eastern Cape coast.

This was not the first time Plön has presented a dissection in Grahamstown. “I had a similar exhibit the last time I attended Scifest which was in 1998; I was still doing my PhD at that time,” she said. Among the people who attended were school pupils from uMtata and other rural schools around the uMtata area. Plön said there were more people than she had expected; “It has been great and it was nice talking to schools from rural areas. You could tell that they were listening attentively though some of them have never been to the coast, but they were interested.”