West Seattle wildlife: Dolphins show off for Water Taxi riders

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10:09 AM: We’ve received multiple reports that West Seattle Water Taxi riders enjoyed a porpoise show this morning! The photos are from Bob Michaels (above) and from Nick Hesterberg (below). And we have details from Adam Aljets: “A great showing of half dozen porpoises on the 8:45 am water taxi. They swam directly up to our boat. We stopped and even circled back around to see them again.”

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Identification help welcome; harbor porpoises are the ones most commonly seen in Puget Sound.

10:38 AM: Annika reports in comments that these are “common dolphins,” and the ID info online seems to correlate. They’re usually seen in warmer waters further south, but we’re finding online reports including this one from Port Angeles in June.

15 Replies to "West Seattle wildlife: Dolphins show off for Water Taxi riders"

  • M July 15, 2016 (10:14 am)

    And they do it on porpoise! 

  • annika July 15, 2016 (10:27 am)

    They are Common Dolphins, and have been seen further south near Olympia in the past week.  I hope I get to see them too!

    • WSB July 15, 2016 (10:37 am)

      Thanks, looking at the harbor porpoise ID info, I didn’t think it was a match, but I can’t find references to other cetaceans like these seen commonly around here. Will update.

  • Ms_F July 15, 2016 (11:10 am)

    There nothing common about them!  I wish I could have seen this!

  • Jason Bell July 15, 2016 (11:27 am)

    They’re not usually here but there have been several pods in Puget Sound, at least one of which has been frequenting the Olympia area for several weeks. There have been near daily reports on Orca Network’s Facebook page in that time. 

  • Rick July 15, 2016 (12:33 pm)

    When I did the Southworth to Fauntleroy and back commute and saw them bow surfing I thought they were Dahl’s porpoise.

  • sc July 15, 2016 (12:55 pm)

    On July 13 (Wednesday) we saw them from the ferry boat as we docked at Vashon around noonish.

    Pretty cool.

  • Tom L July 15, 2016 (2:29 pm)

    Pacific white-sided dolphin.

  • Heather July 15, 2016 (2:41 pm)

    Cool!

  • annika July 15, 2016 (7:17 pm)

    Here’s a little info on them:  http://acsonline.org/fact-sheets/common-dolphin/

  • jay July 15, 2016 (9:53 pm)

    They are not Miami Dolphins, are they?

  • WSince86 July 16, 2016 (9:23 am)

    Ha!

  • JanS July 16, 2016 (5:10 pm)

    How cool ! I was at Swedish recovering from surgery, so totally missed this…thanks for including in the “EXTRA”

    everyone sign up ! :)

  • JH July 19, 2016 (10:45 am)

     I saw them off the water taxi yesterday!

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