Bottlenose dolphin
Tursiops truncatus
SoCal bottlenose live year-round in small resident pods of 10–30 animals and are regulars inside Newport Harbor and Malibu Lagoon. They use a learned technique called strand feeding — chasing fish onto shallow sand margins — and individual dolphins here have been photo-ID catalogued for decades.
About 1.7× as long as an average adult is tall.
A bottlenose dolphin runs about 9.5 ft. Drawn beside an average adult human — 5.7 ft standing, the CDC's own U.S. adult average.
Average adult human: 5.7 ft (5 ft 7 in), CDC NHANES U.S. adult average standing height.
Drawn to the same scale. 9.5 ÷ 5.7 ≈ 1.7.
California coastal bottlenose dolphins have been individually photo-catalogued since the 1980s, and for two decades the count barely moved — abundance estimates of 354 (1987–89), 356 (1996–98), and 323 (2004–05). Then 2009–2011 surveys turned up 450 to 515 animals, the highest ever recorded, three-quarters of them dolphins nobody had catalogued before. NOAA's own read: the jump could be real population growth, or dolphins moving north out of Mexican waters — the data can't yet tell the two apart.NOAA California Coastal Bottlenose Dolphin SAR, rev. 2/9/2017 (in the 2023 Pacific SARs) source →
California coastal stock abundance estimates: essentially flat at 323–356 across three survey periods from 1987 to 2005, then a jump to 453 (the best mark-recapture estimate; a second model put it as high as 515) in 2009–2011 — three-quarters of those dolphins had never been catalogued before.
NOAA's own assessment: the jump in catalogued animals may reflect real population growth, or dolphins moving north from Mexican waters — the data can't yet separate the two.