Captain Dave's Ocean Report

As seen weekly in the
Dana Point News/O.C. Register
June 9, 2005

We saw lots of common dolphin feeding off our coast this week.

Several large megapods of over a thousand common dolphins each could be found just a few miles off our coast this week. Most of the time they were spread out into small feeding groups of ten or fifteen dolphins with a few birds to mark the spot, but a few times the entire pod was all together swimming or feeding - and what a sight! Often times these dolphin would turn upside down as they attacked the sardines. They do this to confuse the fish. Not all common dolphins turn upside down when they are feeding but I have documented several pods that feed like this in our area. First they turn belly up, then they take off full speed will follow the targeted fish often times right out of the water upside down, making a big splash. This behavior is quite exciting to watch.



Most of the books on common dolphin tell you that they feed mostly at night on the deep scattering layer of squid and fish that rises closer to the surface at night and sinks back down during the day, but we see these dolphin feeding out here during the day quite often. Dolphins eat four to six percent of their body weight a day and they all have their own style of doing it. Their primary food in this area is sardines, anchovies, or squid; small fish or cephalopods that they can eat whole - though I have occasionally seen bottlenose dolphins flinging a big fish around trying to tear bite size pieces off.
When they are searching for food the big pod will occasionally spread out in a long chorus line, sometimes over a mile long! From a distance this looks like a tidal wave.

After locating their prey they will then all feed together in a tight, thick group or break up into small subgroups like we saw this week. At times the dolphins are able to split the fish up into smaller groups but the fish’s instinct is to stay with the crowd and hope they are not noticed. Kind of like how I feel when I’m driving down the freeway going with the flow of traffic and I see the highway patrol up ahead.

Anyway, we have over 400,000 common dolphins off California right now, more dolphins than anywhere in the United States - more than Florida, Alaska, and Hawaii combined. All these dolphins consume over a 2.8 million pounds of fish and squid a day, and over one billion pounds a year. And dolphins, birds and sea lions aren’t the only ones after this fast food feast. According to the National Marine Fishery Service: squid and sardines are the top two commercial landings by weight in California with 75,940,292 pounds of sardines taken in 2003 and 86,715,003 pounds of squid. When animals and man compete for food - the animals usually lose. So far, there seems to be enough for all to go around but we have seen the sardine industry completely collapse before off California, as chronicled in John Steinbecks book “Cannery Row”.
FYI - The Black Sea, fifty years ago, had a million common dolphins. Now because of over fishing, pollution and gillnets they only have about 10,000 common dolphin left. How we manage our fishing and pollution problems over the next few years will decide the fate of this incredible living, breathing, moving Yosemite off our coast.

We also saw offshore bottlenose dolphin this week. No mola molas were sighted this week

Well, that’s it till next week. God bless. This is Capt. Dave, over and out.

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Capt. Dave Anderson runs Capt. Dave’s Dolphin Safari out of Dana Point Harbor. He recently completed the award winning documentary film “Wild Dolphins and Whales of Southern California.” Capt. Dave will be sharing his photos and stories and letting us know what he and other skippers are seeing off the Orange County coast. For a daily log of sightings see www.dolphinsafari.com. 949 488-2828

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