Opo was a bottlenose dolphin who became famous throughout New Zealand during the summers of 1955 to 1956 for playing with the children of the small town of Opononi on the Hokianga harbour. [1]
Opo was a wild dolphin that started following fishing boats around Opononi in early 1955. [2] She was originally named "Opononi Jack", based on Pelorus Jack, since she was presumed to be male. Unlike the majority of dolphins, she had no qualms about human company, and would perform stunts for locals, play with objects like beach balls and beer bottles, and allow children to swim alongside her and make contact. [1]
Māori children were more reluctant to play with Opo, as cultural beliefs said the dolphin was a messenger from Kupe. [3]
The dolphin became a local celebrity but news of her soon spread, and visitors from throughout the country would come to watch her. On 8 March 1956 official protection for Opo, requested by locals, was made law, but on 9 March she was found dead [4] in a rock crevice [1] at Koutu Point. There were suggestions that she had become stranded while fishing, or that she had been killed by fishermen fishing with gelignite. [1] [3] Her death was reported nationwide, and she was buried with full Māori honours in a special plot next to the Opononi War Memorial Hall. [3]
The song "Opo the Friendly Dolphin" was written by Crombie Murdoch [5] and recorded by Pat McMinn [6] (coincidentally on the same day Opo died) and was highly popular. [3] A second song was written by Julie Collier in 1988. [3]
Several documentary films have been made about Opo. Rudall Hayward made a film called The Amazing Dolphin of Opononi, released in 1956 and shown in 26 countries. [7]
Opo was the inspiration for the Maurice Shadbolt novel This Summer's Dolphin and a children's storybook titled Opo the Gay Dolphin by Avis Acres was published by Reed Publishing Ltd. [8]
A stone statue of the dolphin playing with a child by Russell Clark was erected in Opononi in 1960. [9] Following vandalism this was replaced by a bronze casting in 2013, with the restored original put on display at the Hokianga Historical Society's Museum at Omapere. [10] [11] [12]
The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa holds a large number of photographs of Opo taken by Eric Lee-Johnson. [13]
A Scottish country dance called Opo was published in 1994. [14] It includes a hey/reel for three with the 1s dancing as a unit and changing the lead on the ends of the heys, a move known as a 'dolphin hey'. [15]
The Hokianga is an area surrounding the Hokianga Harbour, also known as the Hokianga River, a long estuarine drowned valley on the west coast in the north of the North Island of New Zealand.
Pelorus Jack was a Risso's dolphin that was famous for meeting and escorting ships through a stretch of water in Cook Strait, New Zealand. The animal was reported over a 24 year period, from 1888 until his disappearance after 1912. Pelorus Jack was usually spotted in Admiralty Bay between Cape Francis and Collinet Point, near French Pass, a notoriously dangerous channel used by ships travelling between Wellington and Nelson.
Pelorus Sound is the largest of the sounds which make up the Marlborough Sounds at the north of the South Island, New Zealand.
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The upland moa is an extinct species of moa that was endemic to New Zealand. It is a ratite, a grouping of flightless birds with no keel on the sternum. It was the last moa species to become extinct, vanishing around 1500 CE, and was predominantly found in alpine and sub-alpine environments.
Shona Rapira Davies is a sculptor and painter of Ngātiwai ki Aotea tribal descent. Currently residing in Wellington New Zealand.
Opononi is a settlement on the south shore of Hokianga Harbour in Northland, New Zealand. State Highway 12 runs through Opononi. Ōmāpere is on the shore to the south of Opononi and Pakanae to the northeast.
Dame Claudia Josepha Orange is a New Zealand historian best known for her 1987 book The Treaty of Waitangi, which won 'Book of the Year' at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Award in 1988.
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Eric Albert Lee-Johnson was a New Zealand artist and photographer.
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Patricia Rongomaitara "Ramai" Hayward was a New Zealand photographer, actor, and filmmaker who made films in five countries. Her film career began in 1940 when she co-starred in the historical movie Rewi's Last Stand, after meeting her future husband, legendary New Zealand director Rudall Hayward. The first Māori cinematographer, she spent three years making films in England with Rudall. Later the couple were the first to make English language films in China after the communist revolution.
Jacqueline Fraser is a New Zealand artist of Ngāi Tahu descent.
Maureen Robin Lander is a New Zealand weaver, multimedia installation artist and academic. Lander is of Ngāpuhi and Pākehā descent and is a well-respected and significant artist who since 1986 has exhibited, photographed, written and taught Māori art. She continues to produce and exhibit work as well as attend residencies and symposia both nationally and internationally.
The F1 Sculpture Project was five weeks of installation, performance and video art held in Wellington, New Zealand in 1982. F1 was a Conceptual art event that extended sculpture into temporary, multi-part, mixed-media, performance, environmental, intervention art, placing importance on the ideas rather than the objects being created.
Pounamu is a term for several types of hard and durable stone found in the South Island of New Zealand. They are highly valued in New Zealand, and carvings made from pounamu play an important role in Māori culture.
Rona Bailey was a New Zealand drama and dance practitioner, educationalist and activist. Bailey was influential in emerging contemporary dance and professional theatre in New Zealand. She was an activist in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s and 1980s, and part of Treaty of Waitangi anti-racist education that started in the mid-1980s.