kanaloa

Long Snouted Dolphin

Long-snouted Dolphin

(Stenella plagiodon)

Schools of Long-snouted Dolphins are often seen by passengers on the coastwise steamships that pass within sight of the Diamond Shoal Lightship near Hatteras, North Carolina . From a distance these dolphins appear very dark, almost black, above and paler beneath. At closer range the white spots on the purplish-gray upper parts are conspicuous, and as the dolphin rolls at the surface the lighter flanks speckled with white or gray spots may be clearly seen. This dolphin and all of its close kin have a relatively long beak.
Long-snouted Dolphins do not grow much longer than 7 feet and weigh around 280 pounds. The small gray calf swims alongside its mother invariably between the fore flipper and the caudal flukes, both rising and sinking in unison. A sucking fish, the remora, adhering to the fore flipper or to the side of the tail of one of the dolphins, at times has been mistaken for the calf. This has given rise to the erroneous belief that the calf grasps the fore flipper or the caudal flukes of the mother and thus is towed along.
Like most of its relatives, this dolphin feeds on fish. It swims with so little apparent effort and at such speed that the human eye can barely follow the animal's beak as it snaps up its prey. Great schools of another related spotted dolphin (Stenella graffmani) arC frequently seen in the Pacific Ocean in coastal waters northward at least to Acapuico, Guerrero, Mexico, and southward to Gorgona Island, off Colombia.

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