For some, its a hard life

  It is always a happy morning for us when the bottlenose dolphins are seen playing in the Bay.  At times, they can be seen tossing fish as high as twenty feet in the air.  This is to stun the fish so it can be eaten with leisure.  Other times, the dolphins will team up to corral school fish into a tight circle.  The dolphins then can attack and catch more fish.  Mullet, ladyfish, trout even catfish are considered breakfast for a hungry dolphin.  These huge critters are not picky eaters and will devour just about any fish that gets in its way.  Mark and I enjoy watching the bottlenose dolphins as they work and play near the pier.  

  At the same time that the dolphins are busying themselves, it is easy to notice the large schools of fish that are their targets. Mullet and ladyfish, especially, are visible with their jumping and striking the water's surface. The dolphins follow the large schools of fish as they come into the brackish water to spawn.  Once they have the schools in the Bay area, corralling them in even tighter circles is easy due to the shallow water. There is not much chance of escape.

  The other morning, we wasted a good bit of time trying to catch our lunch.  We wound up catching a lot of fish but none that were worth eating.  One of the fish that took my line was a fine ladyfish.  That fish bounced around the water like a maniac before I finally managed to get it on the pier.  Once it was there, we realized that the poor thing had already had a rough go of things.  Something had already taken a nice swipe at the fish's side.  Perhaps one of the dolphins had slapped the ladyfish out of the water but never devoured it.  (This habit is actually called "fish-whacking".  Yep, that is the technical term for it.)  A nice sized scar spanned the girth of the ladyfish.  Its fin had been damaged and it did, indeed, look a little ragged.  It did not appear to have been bitten only smacked.  Poor ladyfish!  It has already been attacked, whacked and then hooked.  Life cannot be easy for smaller fish when the dolphins are hungry!