Maybe it's their smiles or their playful ways. Perhaps it's because they jump out of the water so we humans can catch a fleeting glimpse of their sleek bodies and telltale fins. Maybe it’s just that we wish we, too, could swim all day.
Dolphins fascinate us and draw many vacationers - and locals - out onto guided tours hoping to see the popular marine mammals smile.
Several tour operators bring dolphin lovers on board their boats daily and set off into Roanoke Sound to find the frisky critters. Several groups of bottlenose dolphins use the sound as their summer homes. The trick is to figure out which watery abode they are using on any given day.
The Nags Head Dolphin Watch, guided by Rich Mallon-Day and assisted by Kristen Mazzarella, sets out from Willett’s Wetsports in a covered pontoon boat three times a day all summer. Up to 20 people may join Mallon-Day and Mazzarella on their search for Onion and Cruella and their gang of bottlenoses. Mazzarella scans the horizon with raincoat-yellow binoculars as passengers share the half-dozen other pairs, hoping to win the frozen Snickers bar prize for the first sighting.
Everyone is looking for a black fin above the water as a dolphin comes up to breathe, a splash as a dolphin breaches the surface or a cluster of small boats where other tourists have encountered the creatures. Mallon-Day steers the pontoon boat and monitors the anglers’ radio chatter for mention of the target.
Area tour operators work together - and enlist the aid of local boaters - to scope out the latest dolphin hangouts, sharing information on the airwaves so everyone can enjoy the show. Dolphins tend to travel in certain areas, swimming in channels that take them up and down the sound, then zigzagging out to the shallower waters to search for meals. Tour operators have learned much about their behavior over the years. Mallon-Day has studied dolphin behavior on the East Coast for more than 10 years, arriving on the Outer Banks last summer to continue his research in conjunction with the Atlantic Dolphin Research Cooperative.
The pontoon boat tools around the sound at a pretty good clip, rocking in the wakes of fishing boats and sporty cruisers. Mallon-Day slows down at prime dolphin-watching spots to give his guests a chance to study the water as he puts his own eyes on the job. Mazzarella explains over the boat’s microphone the two rules for finding dolphin: If it stays in the same place for a while, it’s not a dolphin; and if it flies, it’s not a dolphin. The first rule keeps passengers from thinking a black crab pot buoy is a bottlenose. The second disqualifies terns and other birds that splash into the water for their meals.
After an hour or so of watching the water for a black fin to surface, just about anything resembling a dolphin gets a crowd excited.
The hunt is the longest part of the tour, Mallon-Day explains. During that time, he shares anecdotes and slips in a few educational points about dolphins. He speaks fondly of Onion, a dolphin with nicks in his dorsal fin that make it look like the layers of an onion, who spends his winters in Beaufort, N.C., and had been studied by researchers at the North Carolina Maritime Museum for years. Those scientists wondered where Onion spends his summers and put up a $10 prize for the person who found Onion’s summer home.
When Mallon-Day arrived at the Outer Banks last summer, he found Onion playing in Roanoke Sound. Through discussions with local anglers, who recognized the dolphin’s unusual markings, he learned that Onion had been coming up here for quite a while. He leads a group of about 80 dolphins who migrate to the area in the late spring. Cruella - from the Disney character in "101 Dalmations" - sports a vertical white stripe on her dorsal, brings in another group of 125 to 150 bottlenoses. The large groups split into smaller cohorts of 10 or so that spend the summer playing together and, in some cases, raising calves.
Identifying the regulars and studying their behavior is what motivates Mallon-Day and Mazzarella to take groups out three times a day in search of dolphins. The tour fees pay for their research efforts, which include photographing the dolphins they encounter and studying the slides for telltale nicks and scratches on the mammals’ dorsal fins. The creatures they identify are put on a web site (http://dolphin-watch.com) for anyone to browse.
As the boat bounces along the sound, there’s far more to look for than merely dolphins. Mallon-Day points out osprey nests on tops of channel markers and islands made from dredging channels. Depending on the route, passengers may see Pelican Island west of Oregon Inlet, a sand pile covered in brush and the nests of about 2,500 pairs of brown pelicans, which were on the endangered species list until recently.
So far this season, the Nags Head Dolphin Watch has found the mammals on about 80 percent of their trips, Mallon-Day estimates. Last year from July through mid-September the success rate was 100 percent. When they do come out to play, the dolphins may swim within 5 to 10 feet of the boat. Passengers must resist the temptation to join the fellow mammals in the sound since swimming with dolphins in the wild is a federal crime - as is feeding them. Fortunately, taking photos and squealing in delight are not against the law. So snap and laugh away. Once the dolphins are in sight, they provide quite a show.