Dolphin Jump

Bottlenose Dolphin

We were very lucky to get into a pod of some 200 or so Bottlenose Dolphins that were feeding. I was even luckier to be able to capture a shot of one of them jumping from the water.

Bottlenose Dolphins live in groups that typically number about 15 dolphins, but group size varies from solitary bottlenose dolphins up to groups of over 100 or even occasionally over 1000 animals. Their diet consists mainly of fish and they often work as a team to harvest schools of fish, but they also hunt individually.

Dolphins search for prey primarily using echolocation, which is similar to sonar. They emit clicking sounds and listen for the return echo to determine the location and shape of nearby items, including potential prey. Bottlenose Dolphins also use sound for communication including squeaks and whistles emitted from the blowhole and sounds emitted through body language, such as leaping from the water and slapping their tails on the water.