There are three groups of aquatic mammals. Two of them, whales, dolphins and sea cows spend their entire life in water. The third group, seals, sea lions and walruses, breeds on land. With a streamlined body, limbs modified as flippers and a thick layer of blubber for insulation, aquatic mammals are well adapted for life in water, and can spend long periods of time submerged.
The dolphins are very friendly and nearly always approach the boat to bowride much to everybody's delight. They can be seen in groups of just a few (5 - 30 animals in a group) to massive groups of several thousand! They are very intelligent creatures and work together as a team when hunting for their prey of fish by using echo location. They grow to about 8-12.5 ft in length and after a gestation period of 10 - 11 months, mothers give birth to 2.5ft calf.
The dolphins are very vocal creatures when they are bowriding and if you listen carefully you can hear them quite easily even above the water with their high frequency squeaks and clicks. We can use special hydrophone equipment to record these sounds.
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