I started research on Hector’s and Maui dolphins in 1984 for my PhD, and there have been so many surprises since then: getting a job at Otago University studying and teaching about dolphins, finding out that the dolphins get killed in fishing nets, needing 40 years to get even halfway to solving this problem, and the amount of political lobbying by the fishing industry… It has also been great meeting others who are working on similar conservation problems, at conferences for the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission, the IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group, and the Society for Marine Mammalogy.