A miles-long cluster of dolphins has been filmed leaping and gliding across Carmel Bay off the central coast of California, forming an unusual “super pod” of more than 1,500 of the marine creatures.
“They were on the horizon I feel like as far as I could see,” said Captain Evan Brodsky, with the Monterey Bay Whale Watch, who captured drone footage of Friday’s huge gathering of Risso’s dolphins.
The sighting was rare, as Risso’s dolphins typically travel in groups of only 10 to 30 animals, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
Photo: Evan Brodsky, Monterey Bay Whale Watch via AP
From an about 6m-long inflatable boat, Brodsky and a small team out searching for gray whales watched mesmerized as the dolphins jumped out of the bay, peeking around as they leaped in the air. This type of dolphin with its stocky body and bulbous head can weigh as much as 499kg and reach up to 3.9m long.
Colleen Talty, a marine biologist on the trip to track the annual migration of gray whales headed to breeding lagoons off Mexico’s Baja California coast, called it “pretty amazing” to see more than 1,500 dolphins cavorting all around their boat.
Some were even swimming at the front of the vessel and using the waves to propel them forward, a technique known as bow riding, she said.
Photo: Evan Brodsky, Monterey Bay Whale Watch via AP
“They were just having a great time. So they were breaching everywhere ... tail slapping, coming right over to the boat. They looked like they were having a big party,” she said.
The large mix of adult and juvenile dolphins was likely the result of several pods coming together and swimming south, she said.
Although this is not the first time they have seen this large of a group, it is not a common occurrence, Talty said.
The Monterey coastline is a particularly ideal location to spot the dolphins because they prefer extremely deep water.
The area’s underwater submarine canyon means they may swim much closer to shore than elsewhere along the California coast, Talty said.
The team did not initially grasp the sheer size of the super pod that appeared on Friday morning, thinking there were only several hundred dolphins.
“Once we put the drone up, I was just blown away... I kept saying: ‘Look at my screen. Look at my screen. Look how many there are,’” Brodsky said. “It just blows my mind every time. It never gets old.”
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate