Student and surfer Amber Bawden’s dream encounter with 50 dolphins at Streaky Bay

A SPECIAL welcome home from a pod of about 50 dolphins has greeted surfer Amber Bawden at Streaky Bay and their delightful underwater meeting has been caught on video. Watch the footage now.

• Companies hunt for oil in Great Australian Bight

A SPECIAL welcome home from a pod of about 50 dolphins has greeted surfer Amber Bawden at Streaky Bay and their delightful underwater meeting has been caught on video.

The local “Back Beach dolphins”, including babies, played in the waves and then beneath them alongside the 19-year-old Flinders University student, who captured the action on her GoPro camera.

“I just love dolphins,” she said.

“I get so excited when they come along, getting under the water and swimming with them.”

Swimming and surfing with dolphins has been part of her life ever since she was a little girl.

But Ms Bawden fears this and many other natural wonders such as endangered sea lion colonies could be lost if we drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight.

“If there’s an oil spill these beaches are going to be ruined, we’ll have nothing left,” she said.

“Some people live their whole lives around these beaches and the surf. They realise what could be lost, but they just think it won’t happen to us.”

The Bight is the new frontier for oil exploration.

Six oil companies including BP will spend $1.2 billion on surveys and the drilling of nine wells across 38,785 sq km of seabed this year and next.

The date for the first drill hole has been pushed back from April to October next year, but construction of the $775 million drilling rig is on schedule.

Before drilling can proceed, BP must submit an environment plan to the independent regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority.

Ms Bawden was shocked to learn earlier correspondence with the former regulator suggested BP would wait more than three weeks for equipment from overseas before capping a leaking well.

Drilling a relief well to cope with the worst case scenario would take five months, or 158 days.

On the company’s website, the oil giant explains the delay. Capping stacks, “the proven technology for oil spill control” in deep water, would be shipped or flown to Australia from overseas, probably Singapore, then loaded on a vessel and taken to the site.

Details of the current oil spill management strategy will be released later this year, about a year before any operations commence.

“BP expects and welcomes scrutiny by regulators and the community to make sure our work is safe and environmentally acceptable,” a spokesman said.

Originally published as Student and surfer Amber Bawden’s dream encounter with 50 dolphins at Streaky Bay