Swimming with an Ocean Playmate

This highly intelligent aquatic mammal, reputed to have saved the life of many a shipwrecked sailor, has always been depicted as one of man’s best ocean friends. The largest of the beaked dolphins, it is named for its short, stubby beak which resembles the top or neck of a bottle. Bottlenose dolphins are believed to be highly intelligent and live in social groups, called schools or pods. They communicate with each other using distinctive whistles, clicks and body language.

Love of Mother

The Chief breeding season is between March and April. Dolphins will pair up briefly during this time when the male shows a preference for the company of a particular female. Courtship can be violent with much forceful bumping of heads.

Calves are born in midsummer in European waters and between February and May in Florida. So, strong is the attachment between mother and calf that females have been seen supporting dead calves at the surface of the water, as though trying to help them to breathe.

Acrobat of the sea

Bottlenose dolphins travel in family groups of one to 10 in coastal regions and p to 25 offshore, although schools of up to 500 have been recorded. Within these schools, they tend to spend time with like individuals. Females and young calves frequently band together, so do males. Often seen riding the bow wave of a boat and breaching (doing belly-flops), the bottlenose can leap several metres out of the water. It sleeps about eight hours a day, swims at speeds of around 20 km (12 miles) an hour and dives for up to 20 minutes at a depth of 300m (1,000 ft). Males fight viciously over females during the breeding season.

Danger Under the sea

Although still generally plentiful, bottlenose dolphins have been virtually wiped out in some places. They are hunted for meat and other products in parts of the world. In the pacific they are often drowned in tuna nets, although new dolphin-friendly nets are now being used more widely.

Recently there has been concern about man-made marine noise such as shipping sonar, which upsets whales and dolphins ability to feed, navigate and communicate. Evidence suggests that a military submarine detection system in which Low Frequency Active Sonar floods the oceans with noise is threatening the survival of whales and dolphins by destroying their hearing or causing their ears or lungs to haemorrhage.

Inventive Hunters

In the wild, bottlenose dolphins feed on around 8-15 kg (15-33 lb) of squid, shrimp, eels and other fish per day. They often hunt as a team, herding small fish ahead of them and picking off the stragglers; in some waters, they follow shrimp boats to feast on leftovers. Hunting techniques can vary a lot depending on location.

In South Carolina, USA, for instance, dolphins chase fish on to the shore and then roll up on the beach to catch them. However, in the Gulf of Mexico, bottlenoses have been seen stunning fish by tossing them in the air with their tail flukes and then picking them up from the surface. Some researches believe that they can stun their prey by producing loud noises.

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