Type: Aquatic Mammal

Family: Delphinidae

Range: The Dolphin is an aquatic mammal that is found mainly in warm waters in Atlantic, pacific and Indian Ocean. They are available throughout the U.S., Mexico, and Costa Rica.

Size: These dolphins can reach lengths of 1.8-2.6m.

Weight: It is weighing 90-150kg

Diet: Pacific dolphins eat mostly long and narrow fishes like anchovies, herring hake and sardines, they also eat squid. It is understood that they feed mostly at night.

Average life span: The average lifespan of Dolphins is 30 years. However, some can reach the age of 40 years but a few will reach on this age.

Habitat: Oceanic and Costal

Breeding/Reproduction: Pacific dolphins of both sexes reach to sexual maturity when they are 1.8 meter in length. However, this can vary according to geological location. The Length at birth is 80-95 cm; the gestation period is estimated to be 9-12 months.

Dolphins are aquatic mammals similarly in the same category as whales and porpoises. They lived on shallow seas of the continental shelves all over the world. In the tropical waters of Costa Rica you can find many species of oceanic dolphins swimming in the lower pacific coast of Drake Bay on Osa Peninsula. Also they can be seen in the waters along Manuel Antonio Marine Preserve. Here they usually play on the waves of the boats which attract many dolphin watchers all over the world. Also they inhabit the beaches of Manuel Antonio and Espadilla Sur to the Island of Cano.
Costa Rica can be a best place to bath and swim with many dolphins

Costa Rica provides a wonderful holiday with the superb blue ocean and with its good-humored wild dolphins and with the biologically wealthy rain forest. You can locate a different species of dolphin and several other marine lives together with gorgeous vegetation and natural world to explore.

It is an unbelievable experience with dolphins – they will ride the stoop waves, jump joyfully, and they might come to examine you closely and watching straight into the eyes. This dolphin encounter, you will never forget.

And when you get out of the water you will be greeted again by the rainforest with all its life.

There are many species of dolphins all over the world. But the most common species inhabiting the waters of Costa Rica are the following species:

Spotted Dolphins

Spotted Dolphin or the Stenella attenuate are known to live in warmer and tropical waters that are why they are rampant in Costa Rica. These dolphins has elongated and slender beak. Both of their upper and lower jaws are dark grayish color but the lips have slim white lines. Their chin as well as their belly and throat are white in color but some has pale grey and has spots. It has a long frontal fin that forms like a concave. They are common leapers of the sea. You can see them playing and riding along with boats.

Spinner Dolphin

Spinner Dolphin or Stenella longirostris are dolphins that live in tropical waters like in Costa Rica. They are famous for their acrobatic ability to spin when breaching. They have long and slim body. Adult spinner dolphins have the average length of almost 235 centimetres and weighs up to 79 kilograms. Their back fins are somewhat triangular in shape. They are mostly dark gray at the back and white or light gray underneath. There is also a dark line which runs from the eyes to the flipper.

Bottlenose dolphins

Bottlenose dolphins or Tursiops truncates are the most well known in the dolphin family. They are the most social dolphins. They live in pods with almost 30 constituents. Fish is their main diet. Mostly they are grey in color. Darker grey in the back while lighter color in the front. Mostly they are 6 to 13 feet long and weighs in range from 150 to 650 kilograms. Males are longer and heavier than the female.

Short Beak Common Dolphin

Common Dolphin has two species one is the long beak common dolphin and the other is the short beak common dolphins. They are both just medium in size with average length of the adult is 6 to 8 feet and weighs from 80 to 235 kilograms. Their dorsal part are dark grayish color while their belly underneath is white. In the side it seems that it has like a marking that looks like a grayish hourglass.

Orca

Orcas (Orcinus orca) also known as Killer Whale but belongs to the family of dolphins found in Costa Rica. They have a uniform pattern of black back with chest and side that is white and a touch of white behind the eyes. Usually adult male are 20 to 26 feet long and weighs over 6 tonnes. Female are much smaller than the males which normally has 16 to 23 feet in length and just 3 to 4 tones in weight. They are usually found in Whales National Park just north of Playa Uvita.

Dolphins are considered social and playful towards human. You can see them riding the waves or just swimming alongside the boat. They are intelligent and easy to train which happens to the ocean parks all over the world where dolphins are jumping through rings and many more. Natural predators of dolphins are larger sharks like the bull shark, dusky shark, tiger shark and the great white shark. But still human is its greatest threat. Human’s trash that were flushed in the oceans like pesticides, metals, plastics and materials that could create water pollution makes these dolphins sick or die. Also some are caught in the nets of fishing vessels or even collided with them. But the horror part of these is some parts of the world still eat dolphins. Also loud underwater noises could injure these dolphin’s ears.