With their bright colors and wild, entertaining acrobatics, dolphin are considered by many to be the clown prince of the open ocean. They have neon upper body colors of blue and green that taper to bright yellow sides and shiny white bellies.
To prevent confusion between the dolphin fish and dolphin mammal, the fish is often referred to by its Hawaiian name, Mahi Mahi — especially in restaurants, where they are a popular entree.
Dolphin are found almost worldwide in tropical and subtropical waters worldwide. In the western Atlantic, they range from the tip of South America to the Mid-Atlantic states. They are the fastest-growing of any offshore pelagic fish and have a high reproduction rate, reaching sexual maturity in four to five months and spawning several times a year. They rarely live longer than five years.
Dolphin are one of the few species in which the male grows faster and lives longer. Males are easily recognizable by their high, square foreheads and are referred to as bulls, while the females with more sloping foreheads are called cows.
Dolphin usually travel at least in pairs, and they may be in schools. Often, dolphin strikes come in twos and threes, with the potential for even more. They are usually hungry and aren’t typically picky, because their fast growth rates requires eating almost constantly. Schooling dolphin compete for food, and strikes can be spectacular.
Fishermen have given dolphin nicknames, like peanut, bailer, slinger, shingle and gaffer, based on their size. North Carolina’s state-record dolphin weighed 79 pounds and was caught off Cape Hatteras in 1993 by Sean Yurkanin.
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