29.01.2020: Bottlenose dolphins attacking a Atlantic spotted dolphin

Sightings January 29th, 2020 – Valle Gran Rey / La Gomera: Today, during our whale watching tour, we got to observe a rare event – bottlenose dolphins brutally attacking an atlantic spotted dolphin.

The bottlenose dolphins, large specimens with strong bodies, kept biting the spotted dolphin and hitting it with their noses and their flukes, sometimes so hard that it was thrown out of the water. We have never seen such a brutal attack, although we have often seen bottlenose dolphins harass pilot whale calves, but never like this.

One week later we found a dead dolphin during our tour. From the Excursiones Tina boat we couldn‘t do anything, but the crew of the Oceano boat, who had also seen it, returned after their tour and pulled the dead dolphin out of the sea, it was a male fully grown atlantic spotted dolphin. The carcass was given to a veterinarian from Canarias Conservación. It is probably the same animal that we saw during the attack.

Recent sightings off the coast of La Gomera