A Bottlenose dolphin provided a few women sailboat racing in the Bay Area last Friday with a surprising treat.
As the boat was traveling west in the San Francisco Bay toward the Bay Bridge, Julia Smith and her teammates noticed the dolphin raced ahead of the vessel and jumped several times into the air, much to the delight of the amused women, according to SFist.
“At first we thought it was a Bay porpoise, but when it started doing acrobatics, it was shocking,” said Smith. “Bay porpoises are seen mostly by the Golden Gate Bridge and seeing a dolphin is pretty unusual.”
According to a conversation Smith had with Bill Keener, the Director of Golden Gate Cetacean, bottlenose dolphins are not totally uncommon in the Bay Area.
“They are very curious and social by nature, and generally live within a mile of the coastline,” explained Keener in an e-mail to Smith.
Keener explained that there are up to 100 bottlenose dolphins in the Bay Area and around 600 on the coast, but no one has ever gotten video footage of the dolphins until now.
