16 thoughts on “Amazing dolphin superpod off Vancouver”

  1. Why does the name for large groups of animals vary so much? Why can’t we just call them all “herds”?

    1. I agree. It’s weird. “Pride,” “murder,” etc. Maybe school for in the water, flock for the air, and herd for on land. Very simple.

    2. I think it become something of a literary game at some point. I rather like it, actually.

      My parents often refer to an assemblage of young human females as a “giggle of girls.”

      Cheers,

      b&

  2. Wow! Just took the Vancouver Island Ferry ( Horseshoe Bay- Nanaimo) 3 weeks ago and saw nary a one…

    I like murder better than herd:-)

    1. I just filmed a murder of crows. When I was at work there were hundreds of them & they looked like bats! This is the time of year for murders of crows!

  4. I was reminded of some entries in Darwin’s diary from the Beagle voyage:

    (18 July) Driving along at the rate 8 & 9 knots per hour. A wonderful shoal of Porpoises at least hundreds in number crossed the bows of our vessel. The porpoises proceeded by jumps, in which the whole body was exposed; & as hundreds cut the water it presented an extraordinary spectacle. When the ship was running 9 knots these animals could with the greatest ease cross & recross our bows & then dash away right ahead

    (These are from the twitter feed reprinting diary entries by the day, it is fun to read, though I don’t know what year they’re up to now, 1832 or so, still early)

    (https://twitter.com/cdarwin)

    1. What an amazingly huge group of dolphins. In groups that large, they must have a complex social hierarchy. I wonder how it works.

      Darwin’s Twitter is an excellent idea. Thanks for pointing me to it, M Janello.

  6. The link here is too slow to try watching video, but our MMO (Marine Mammal Observer) was mentioning a pod of around a hundred dolphins last week, so it’s by no means uncommon.
    (I annoy him by referring to his “Name That Cetacean” hand book as “The Japanese Recipe Book.” Though we’ve got enough Noggins on board that they could probably come up with their own recipe book. No Icelanders to my knowledge, so we’re safe from fermented basking shark. For the moment.)

  7. I found the person who took the video. He is Rob Maguire, robmacquire on Tw..ter. From his comments, he was becoming annoyed with people using his clip without permission.

    One link he gave, so presumably with permission was to Huffington Post BC where you can see the video.

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