Social media are like plutonium.  A little bit might have no effect, but if you add lots of little bits together until you get to critical mass then all of a sudden… well let's say you generate a lot of power!  When social media reach this critical mass its power can change governments and cultures.

In the case of Hector's and Maui's Dolphins, social media has helped a lot.  Insiders say that NZ government has been "feeling the pressure" from the continuous exposure of their poor track record with the protection of these dolphin species. 49994 submissions and a total of 63500 signatures were received by NZ government during the effort at the end of last year.  Social media raised the money to send NABU representative Barbara Maas to this year's meeting of the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in S. Korea, where the information she presented prompted a strong recommendation urging New Zealand to protect all Maui’s dolphin habitat against harmful fishing methods immediately..

Mainstream media has stood up to take note as well, and a recent press release referencing the expert opinion on the dolphin's current status was printed in newspapers as far and wide as India, Ireland, the Philippines, France, the US, Australia and Kazakhstan. As Maui’s dolphins teeter on the brink of extinction, we are on the cusp of reaching critical mass. But we need to keep the pressure up and grow our community. It might just take one more push. Which is why we're organising a Tweetstorm to herald a boycott of New Zealand seafood on August 8th.

Here's what happens: you do the click/like/tweet/forward-thing with the videos/pictures of Maui's Dolphins (#911MauisDolphins), and for the time being stop eating any NZ fish products: if you're at a restaurant you can ask the waiter where the fish comes from, at the supermarket it should be written on the packaging (of course this will affect businesses that do not fish in the dolphin's territory, which is regrettable, but this kind of commercial collateral is preferable to the by-catch of even a single one of the remaining 50 Maui's Dolphins).

People regularly ask me, "isn't it too late?" or "shouldn't the remaining dolphins be put in captivity to protect them?"  My answer comes from the scientists who have done the decades of research and population modelling: no and no – because there is still sufficient genetic diversity and because all of these dolphins that have ever been held in captivity died. Besides without a safe habitat where would they go and they certainly don’t deserve to be relegated to living museum pieces. With protection across its full territory, the species can recover.  Let's show the government and the fishing industry that this is the only adequate policy.

And yet, and yet … Despite all this, despite tens of thousands of petition signatures, individually written letters to the ministers and prime minister, despite the schoolchildrens' handwritten poems and carefully-coloured dolphin pictures, despite dozens of damning international press articles, all efforts and results for which I am sure the readers of this blog have played a large part… despite all this, Hector's and Maui's dolphins are no more protected than they were five months ago.

Why?  New Zealand's government is contemptuously playing a waiting game. They are waiting for the outcry over a spate of net-scarred dolphin carcasses that washed up on the beaches last summer to die down. They are waiting for the furor over the latest Maui's population estimate - lower than anyone possibly feared - to subside.  They are an entropic government, waiting for entropy to have its way.

And meanwhile, while they waver and defer, while they shelve and consult, in the winter seas of New Zealand's west coast a population of now less than 55 animals, who represent the entirety of their species, swims every day in a territory that overlaps with the unscrupulous set nets and trawlers that have brought their number to the verge of annihilation.

I know I'm not alone in saying that I will not wait or be content until they are protected and their numbers begin to increase.  In the second half of this year, several documentaries and features including one with CBS's 60 Minutes, the most viewed and respected television journalism program worldwide, will air, telling parts of my story and showing the world the dark side of NZ's shameful treatment of these dolphins.  By exposing the truth and threatening the multi-billion dollar business of tourism and fisheries, perhaps we can finally convince the NZ lawmakers into making the right decision.