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Newest Video: Fall Back Festival benefits PACT - Click Here to view Dolphin watch: Be a tourist at home
The boat slowed, then stopped, idling in the Aransas Pass, not far from Ancel Brundrett Pier. More than 30 people - men, women and children - lined the vessel's rails and peered expectantly toward the private marina channel mouth about 100 feet away. "There's one!" a young girl yelled, thrusting a finger toward the channel mouth.
A gray dorsal fin broke the surface. Then another. And another. A murmur, dotted with a few excited squeals, rose up among the passengers on board the Mustang, a dolphin tour boat. Cameras clicked. The dolphins were about 75 feet away but still could be heard - PUFF! - as they exhaled and inhaled through their blow holes. "Dolphins are so cool!" a boy said. It was Friday, June 13, just another magical day on Port Aransas waters. Dolphins are one of the most enchant- ing features of life in these parts. The sleek, playful creatures can be viewed from land, like from the jetties and from Ancel Brundrett Pier and Charlie's Pasture; or up-close and personal from any of several charter boat businesses operating in Port Aransas. Linda Price-May, a research associate at the Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi Center for Coastal Studies, has been studying Coastal Bend dolphin populations for 21 years. Here are a few dolphin facts, according to May:
• There are no porpoises in our waters. Generally what you see are Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. • Only about 50 to 60 dolphins inhabit the bays and channels in the Port Aransas and Corpus Christi areas during the summer. The population skyrockets to more than 1,800 during winter. Most dolphins head into the Gulf of Mexico during the summer to seek cooler waters, May said. Even though only a relative few are left behind, they are easily spotted at favorite feeding areas in Port Aransas channels. • May has photographed 1,865 individual dolphins. She can tell them apart by the shapes of their dorsal fins. • Dolphins ride the waves pushed ahead of the bows of ships to conserve the energy they normally would use swimming from one place to another.
• The federal Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 requires that people stay at least 50 feet away from dolphins. You never know what you'll see on a dolphin tour. It's not unheard-of to see them shoot out of the water, leaping high in the air before splashing back down into the water. Billy Gaskins, the owner of the Mustang, said he and his passengers have seen some even more amazing things over the years. They've witnessed a few births of baby dolphins on the water surface. Gaskins noticed what appeared to be a second female at the scene of at least one birth, seemingly a midwife helping nudge the baby dolphin toward the water's surface, so it could breathe. Gaskins recalled a day when he and his passengers spotted two dolphins playing together. "They were throwing a flounder like a Frisbee," he said. "Like a cat playing with a mouse."
"We like spending the family time out on the water, in the breeze," Jody Waggoner said. "It doesn't get old," Shelly Waggoner said. "It's different every time." Another passenger, Tonya Sosebee, of Weatherford, recalled the thrill of watching a large group of dolphins on a previous tour. "The water was just rippling," she said. "You could even hear them vocalizing." As the June 13 tour ended, 7-yearold passenger Bo Brown of San Antonio talked simply about how pretty the dolphins were that he saw. "They were slippery and shiny!" Bo said. If you go … Dolphin tours operate out of Port Aransas locations including: |
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