Bottlenosedolphins live in the ocean all around Folly Beach and in our surrounding rivers. It’s not unusualto see them frolicking about – especially if the waters are calm. When you’reout in a boat, please be careful not to come too close to them with yourengine.

The Atlantic bottlenose dolphins growto be at most 12 feet long, sometimes weighing more than 1,400 pounds. But most aresmaller than this. They are hunters that fish most often at the surface of the water,eating mostly fish and squid.

Bottlenose dolphinslive in small pods of up to 12 members; they are very social animals. Often, many podsgroup together to form congregations of hundreds of dolphins. Some sharks will prey upondolphins and dolphins can also be trapped in fishing nets or injured by boat motors.

Dolphins can dive down to more than 1,000 feet and can jump up to 20 feet out of thewater. A bow rider is a dolphin that hitches a ride in the bow wave in front of a ship.The dolphin surfs using the pressure created in front of a moving ship. They are very fastswimmers. Some can swim at speeds up to 35mph. It's no wonder they can keep up withspeeding boats!

Here are some interesting dolphinfacts:

	Dolphins tend to live for abouttwenty years, but some have been known to live as much as forty years.
	When dolphins sleep, they sleep in asemi-alert state by resting one side of their brain at a time.
	If need be, dolphins can hold theirbreath for 5-8 minutes at a time. But they usually come up for air about every 2 minutes.
	Dolphins can dive as deep as 1000feet.
	A dolphin sheds its outer layer ofskin every two hours.
	Dolphins will help sick or injureddolphins as much as they can.
	Dolphins work as a team if danger isnearby.
	Every dolphin has its own signaturewhistle to distinguish itself from its companions.

Dolphins do not have the besteyesight but they do rely on echolocation to navigate, find food and communicate.Echolocation is a technique that dolphins use to "see" what’s ahead of themby the use of sounds. These sounds, or clicks, are produced by a mechanism just belowtheir blowhole and are emitted at a rate of about 300 sounds a second. When these soundwaves hit an object, the echo bounces back and the dolphin then knows that something liesahead. The signature whistles, or squeals, that are used by dolphins are for communicationand as a way of indicating their emotional states.

The Bottlenose dolphin has up to 26teeth on each side of its jaws – upper and lower - that's a possible total of 104teeth! The numerous teeth are what make their "beaks" protrude so far forward.The previously mentioned beak is not the dolphin’s nose, as many think. They actuallybreathe by just surfacing and using their blowholes, as opposed to sticking their wholehead out of the water. You could say that blowholes are the equivalent of the humannostrils. The first thing a newborn dolphin must do is to go to the surface to breathe.But the newborn can not swim so its mother and another dolphin will help push it to thesurface for its first breath of air. The newborn is a quick learner though, as it will beable to swim in about 30 minutes!

We hope you enjoy your dolphin-watching here on Folly Beach !