Dolphins at Play

[Ean Austral]

Gday All,
Not sure what it was today but the Dolphins were having some play time.

Just a few of the many Pics taken.

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/228/dolphins1.jpg (http://img339.imageshack.us/i/dolphins1.jpg/)

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3860/dolphins2.jpg (http://img109.imageshack.us/i/dolphins2.jpg/)

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/5589/dolphins3.jpg (http://img109.imageshack.us/i/dolphins3.jpg/)

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/7721/dolphins4.jpg (http://img205.imageshack.us/i/dolphins4.jpg/)

It amazed me I had enough time to go and get the camera then come back and they were still playing

Hope you liked them...Cheers Ean

[Ean Austral]

We seem to have more this year than I can remember for a lot of years.

There is alot of baby ones and in the night time the glow from our decklights brightens about 10mtrs each side of the boat, you can see the adults are teaching the little ones to catch fish.
Its amazing to watch them chase the flying fish with ease, and the speed they generate is something else.

Certainly one of gods great creatures..

Cheers Ean

[Sprint]

We seem to have more this year than I can remember for a lot of years.

There is alot of baby ones and in the night time the glow from our decklights brightens about 10mtrs each side of the boat, you can see the adults are teaching the little ones to catch fish.
Its amazing to watch them chase the flying fish with ease, and the speed they generate is something else.

Certainly one of gods great creatures..

Cheers Ean
its good to see theyre on the increase

[Fusion]

I used to work on my dads crayfish boat when i was 18 . After we had set all the pots again i would sit up at the bow with my breakfast and watch the dolphins have fun in front of the boat . They are such a beautiful animal to watch and could watch them all day .

[Ean Austral]

To the couple of people who asked ,
Yes the flying Fish are real, the next one that lands on the deck I will get a photo of..
They dont fly that far above the water but they do have little wings, when I can get a photo you will understand...




Cheers Ean

[5teve]

good luck getting a photo of the flying fish! :D

i see them regularly when we are out on our boat.. but they are so quick. i think the furthest i have seem one fly is about 100-150 metres. amazing little things..

Steve

[Ean Austral]

good luck getting a photo of the flying fish! :D

i see them regularly when we are out on our boat.. but they are so quick. i think the furthest i have seem one fly is about 100-150 metres. amazing little things..

Steve

The Dolphins chase them and sometimes they crash land on the deck of the boat,100 mtrs is about the best i've seen but that was about 4 of them side by side.:eek:
Yep they are amazing little critters thats for sure


Cheers Ean

[isuzurover]

My better half has a few pics of flying fish from her last work trip. Will have to dig them out...

[dmdigital]

Thanks for sharing Ean.

Don't think dolphins need a reason to play do they. I was on a boat coming out of Gove harbour one day and we had a pod of about 50 surround us for a couple of kilometres. They are creatures that enjoy life:D

[zulu Delta 534]

A couple of us were out in the bay off Brissy a couple of years ago, sightseeing when we ran across a pod of dolphins and noticed that amongst them all there were a couple of very young juveniles, being shepherded along by doting parents.
We slowed the boat right down and cruised alongside them for a while watching the youngens with great interest.
On the other side of the boat at this time, a great amount of splashing and thrashing began to take place and as a result, the most amazing display of acrobatics and frivolity I have ever seen began to take shape right before our very eyes. We were all spellbound for at least 5 minutes, oohing and aahing at every spectacular manoeuvre we were shown, sometimes up to 10 dolphins erupting from the water together in perfect unison. It was absolutely amazing.
After what seemed like ages, but probably was only a couple of minutes, Mrs ZD said, "Has anyone seen the little ones?"
Eventually it dawned on us that, what had originally been taken as just a brilliant 'show off' display was in fact simply a distraction to divert our interest from the mothers and littlies amongst them allowing them to quietly slip away from our prying eyes (and possible perceived threat) to more secure waters further from the boat.
The display put on was well worthy of any circus act and was simply spectacular, but once the threat had passed (Mum and the kids were far enough away and out of sight) it stopped abruptly and the waters of Moreton bay returned to its normal placid self. A day indelibly imprinted on my memory but unfortunately before I had a digital camera.
Regards
Glen

[Ean Austral]

The Dolphins see us as a food source so we dont scare the mothers and the littlies away, if anything we attract them, its quite common to see the littlies swim away from the group and get rounded up real quick from a couple of the adults.
Many years ago when I was a Deckhand we fished the same area for about 3 weeks and every day we would anchor behind the same small island to get shelter from the weather.A group of about 4 adults always hung around the boat to get the scraps from when we cleaned our nets.I started saving small Mackeral as they love them,(in those days we were aloud to keep them onboard, but not now), over about 1 week I fed 2 of the dolphins each day, by the end of the week I could slap the fish on the surface of the water and they would take them from my hand..and they would wait until I had let the fish go before they swam off..It was AMAZING..
Those Days I could only afford the old Kodak wind-on camera and the photos dont do it justice as it had no zoom and was a very cheap camera.
I have done it 1 time since then in 25yrs, but for a 17y/old, it was then and think it is still to this day one of the highlights of my time at sea.

Cheers Ean

[Chenz]

I fish out of Forster once a month and we usually go out on Friday night heading out to the five mile reef or south down towards Seal Rocks. On nights when the phosphorescence is high it is amazing to see what looks like torpedoes heading at great speed towards the boat. They are dolphins. The common dolphins not the larger grey bottle nose ones that you see close to shore and in Wallis Lake.

When they get close they jump out of the water to the height of the deck and look right at you. You can almost touch them. Unbelievably nimble and graceful creatures.

Another time I watched a pod of bottlenose dolphins at the break-wall that had a huge school of Australian Salmon hemmed right up onto the wall. They wanted to go out with the run-out tide but everytime one of them tried to make a run for it the dolphins would cut it off and it was dinner in a flash.

They did this all afternoon until the tide changed and the salmon then went crazy rushing against the run-in tide to get out to sea.

As for flying fish I have seen them on a big swell use the pressure wave in front of the swell to glide well over 200 metres. They were being chased by big tuna and as it turned out a 100KG plus marlin - it wouldn't bite on our lures and skip baits though