Peale’s Dolphin
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Peale’s Dolphins & Right Whales
We’re working with Southern Right Whales here. And, you know, Right Whales are, well, as their name suggests, they’re pretty easy to study and very amenable to that. So we were out in our boat, I think there was three right whales on this time, just lazing at the surface. And they were pretty quiet, which was great because it meant that we have a lot of opportunity to approach to get photo identification shots of their heads and collect some tissue samples. So I was feeling pretty happy that the animals were behaving quietly and nicely. And then, of course, a pod of Peale’s dolphins arrived and immediately the right whales became super agitated and animated and the Peale’s dolphins were swimming round and round and round them and the boat and then doing ridiculous jumps. And then we had as usual, the upside down tail slapping, which they decided to do in front of the boat. And right in the face of the right whales, It was really undignified and the right whales were really not impressed. And that was the end of data collection for the right whales because after that, they were so agitated and yeah, playing around with the right, with the Peale’s dolphins. So it wasn’t a great for data collection, but it was really nice to look at that interaction. And, ,it did leave us all with a big smile on our faces. In many ways, Peale’s are like real life Disney characters because their colouration pattern and they have this dark face, Peale’s Dolphins. It’s one of their characteristic features that their face and their chin is sort of a dusky black in coloration. And it just means that when they’re doing naughty things and curious things, you can kind of see the whites around their eyeballs really vividly because the black. So, they’re always, they always give that impression of being, yeah, just popped out from a Disney movie. -Caroline This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 71 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here.