Dolphins on Wrightsville Beach

This picture was taken on January 21, 2018 on the Oceanic pier of Wrightsville beach. In the picture, there is a pod of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus) chasing schools of bait fish about 50-100 feet offshore, presumably either Herring or Mullet. Dolphins live together in a pod of typically 10-30 dolphins where they work together to hunt down food. They use echolocation to find and track down bait fish in the ocean to then feed on. They emit a high-pitched sound that travels through the water, and then once it encounters an object it bounces back to the dolphin. The signal is then used by the dolphin to determine if the object is prey or not and how far away the object is from the dolphin. The dolphins in the picture were using a predation method to hunt fish where the pod circles around a school of baitfish and push the school towards shore, so they can more easily catch and eat the bait fish. The teeth of the dolphin are cone-like so they can grab onto nearby fish and then swallow them whole. The bottlenose dolphin is commonly found throughout the world in temperate water.

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