Coming across dolphins is always a truly magical experience, despite the fact that a chance meeting with these beautiful creatures is not at all uncommon in the Croatian Adriatic. Even though dolphins can be seen somewhat regularly, when you get to experience them playing and enjoying themselves like this, you cannot help but feel very privileged.
As Morski writes on the 30th of July, 2019, one such video of dolphins captured as they playfully enjoyed themselves comes from the bay of Zli Dol near Bol on the island of Brač, the third largest Croatian island, and the largest one in Dalmatia, just across from Split.
There are only two species of dolphin currently known to be present in the Adriatic sea – the common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and the short-beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis).
The short-beaked common dolphin used to live in and be spread across the entire Adriatic, but today we rarely see them in the southern Adriatic. There are almost none of them in the northern area, so the news quickly spread when, back in July 2018, researchers discovered a group of over fifty short-beaked common dolphins, an otherwise regionally extinct species, during a visit to the beautiful Telašćica Nature Park on Dugi Otok.
Bottlenose dolphins can still be found throughout the Adriatic, and this is the species to which all the most famous dolphins belong; those seen on television, sich as Flipper, Fa and Bee from the movie, and most of those performing various tricks and interacting positively with humans are bottlenose dolphins.
These are the famous intelligent and very sociable dolphins (with a few exceptions of other species), written about long ago by the ancient Greeks, and even today, these apparently fearless and very friendly creatures tend to approach people without any issues and often enter into harbours and swimming areas. While there is likely another reason to this behaviour, as dolphins are known to terrorise schools of fish in order to confuse them and make them more easy pickings, it is precisely these dolphins that some believe ”help” fishermen catch their fish, by forcing fish into their nets. It’s really no wonder that their Croatian name is the ”good dolphin” (dobri dupin)!
In addition to these two popular inhabitants of the Adriatic, we can sometimes witness some species of porpoises and whales that have for some reason strayed from the Mediterranean sea into Croatian waters.
Watch this beautiful and uplifting video of some dolphins having fun near Bol, and make sure to keep your eyes peeled this summer on the Croatian coast – you might just see some!
Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more.
