Meet ‘Pronk’, the first North East coastal dolphin to be named in memory of cancer mum

The young male bottlenose has just been named after avid wildlife lover Ghislaine Pronk, who died in October after a brave cancer battle, at the age of just 54.

Ghislaine was Dutch, and moved to this region with her teenage daughter, Sharlene, only about three years ago, settling in Horden, County Durham.

With a passion for the sea, wildlife and paddle-boarding, she very quickly became a popular member of the region’s thousands-strong dolphin-spotting fraternity.

Ghislaine Pronk, the first person to have a North East coastal dolphin named in her memory.

Ghislaine spent hours each week with her partner, Donald Lang, and fellow- enthusiasts following dolphins up and down the coast.

She was often to be found at Roker beach in Sunderland, and on County Durham’s coast, where one of the dolphins she regularly watched was the young male now named in her memory.

But in the autumn of 2022 Ghislaine, originally from Soest in Holland, was diagnosed with cancer.

Her friends rallied round to support her, but despite a courageous and dignified fight against the disease, she died in October this year, at Alice House Hospice in Hartlepool.

She left behind Sharlene, her one-year-old granddaughter, Chloe, and her partner, Donald.

But now, thanks to one of Ghislaine’s dolphin-following friends, her memory will live on – in the lovable form of ‘Pronk’ the dolphin.

The friend in question is Jo Richardson, who happens to help run the ‘citizen- scientist-driven’ North East Cetacean Project (NECP). (‘Cetaceans’ is the Latin- based name for dolphins and similar sea mammals.)

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In co-operation with Aberdeen University, they are busy producing the first official catalogue of all known dolphins living off the North East coast, which means creating identities for each one – usually in the form of a code.

‘Pronk’, who will grow to be about four metres (13ft) long as an adult, had yet to be officially listed in the NECP catalogue when Ghislaine passed away, but Jo said because he seems to share Ghislaine’s playful nature, she thought he would be ideal to carry her name.

She said: “One of the things the dolphins have done is brought people together and created friendships, which is how I came to know and love Ghislaine, and we saw her regularly at Roker.

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“She was somebody who everybody was very fond of, and when I heard she’d passed, I wanted to do something as a tribute to her, because the dolphin-spotters like her make huge contributions to the research we’re doing.

“I asked Donald and found that one of his nicknames for Ghislaine was ‘Pronk’, which seemed like a good choice, with Pronk’s nature being like Ghislaine’s and the name itself not being gender-specific. So I went with that.”

Pronk and his fellow dolphin pod members will continue to attract spotters to the beaches, cliffs and piers of the North East – but now Ghislaine’s memory will always accompany them.

A group of Ghislaine’s friends from the Dolphin Spotting North East group, led by group founder Kim Willis, are taking part in the traditional Boxing Day Dip at Sunderland’s Seaburn beach, to raise money for Alice House Hospice, where Ghislaine was nursed before she died.

Their donations page can be found at: https://alicehousehospice.enthuse.com/pf/dunkin-dolphins