Boaters in California’s Monterey Bay on Tuesday were treated to a rare and entertaining spectacle involving a backflipping dolphin.
The footage accompanying this post, captured aboard a Monterey Bay Whale Watch vessel, shows a Pacific white-sided dolphin performing a series of backflips as if purely for the fun of doing so.
Nancy Black, owner of the company and captain of the Sea Wolf II, said that while one or two dolphins in an active pod might occasionally exhibit this behavior, it has rarely been captured on video.
The vessel was in the midst of about 2,000 Pacific white-sided dolphins, which are admired for their active behavior and distinct appearance, when one of them started leaping and somersaulting.
Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a researcher who was aboard the Sea Wolf II, told FTW Outdoors, “They were all over the place, chasing fish, swimming alongside the boat, bow-riding and surfing our wake…. and in the periphery one of them started flipping out, literally.”
Schulman-Janiger said Pacific white-sided dolphins are the only dolphin species in the Northern Hemisphere to exhibit backflipping behavior.
The dolphin on Tuesday performed at least 20 flips while traveling at high speed before blending back into the pod.
–Images and top video are courtesy of Alisa Schulman-Janiger. Second video is courtesy of Colleen Talty/Monterey Bay Whale Watch
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