Dolphin-watching tours off the Gulf Coast of Texas offer the chance to see shiny, sleek, gray bottlenose dolphins playfully break the surface of the water as you’re perched aboard a safe and seaworthy vessel rolling smoothly with the motion of the waves. And it’s not only a glimpse but a full-blown performance of sorts when several of the beautiful species emerge together, leaping and playing in front of your cameras. It truly is an amazing site to see.
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A Texas Dolphin-Watching Tour Provides Everything You Need For Fun in the Sun
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Photo: Pixabay
As your boat idles and drifts, more dolphins will usually appear, and parents and kids will point and giggle while the dolphins bedazzle them. Many such tours into the Gulf of Mexico aim to show people not only the dolphins but also examples of the accompanying marine life. Your captains will point out landmarks such as lighthouses and sites for sunken ships, and often give a brief nautical history of the area. You’ll notice seabirds soaring overhead or floating along on the water, and ships heading towards port – a few will even have dolphins surfing in their bow waves. There are a minimum of seven different dolphin tour operations running out of Port Arkansas, South Padre Island, Galveston, and Corpus Christi. On any given day, they’ll take a number of parents, grandparents, kids, and general tourists out to watch the amazing spectacle they themselves get to experience as a regular day on the job.
Photo: Wikipedia
There are some 400 dolphins that call this area their home. Oftentimes, your captain will announce that the kids can come into the wheelhouse and “steer” the boat. Other times, there are various distractions aside from dolphins that keep them occupied and happy that they’ve launched out to sea. There are approximately 26 species of dolphins and whales which appear off the Texas coast. Bottlenose dolphins are the most common by a long stretch. With erect dorsal fins, gray coloring, and distinctive tails, they develop social groups called pods which can be made up of eight individuals and are highly functioning. The group, or pod, will live in the same location year-round, which allows dolphin tours from Texas to see so many of them in the same places quite often. The dolphins can find everything they need to sustain themselves here. And dolphin-watchers never have a lack of that either!
