VIDEO: Back-flipping dolphin wows whale watchers in Monterey Bay
MONTEREY BAY, Calif. (KGO) -- Monterey Bay whale watchers were treated to an incredible and rare acrobatic show on Tuesday when a dolphin started back-flipping out of the water and high into the air.
The incredible aerial display was captured by a tour group ran by Monterey Bay Whale Watch.
In the instagram video, filmed by Marine biologist Colleen Talty, one dolphin can be seen leaping out of the water and then doing a complete backflip in the air before bellyflopping back into the ocean.
The video capture the dolphin doing five backflips in all.
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Company officials say that this was Pacific White-sided Dolphins and that it is part of a huge group of dolphins currently in Monterey Bay.
"We have 5,000 dolphins - over 3,500 Northern Right Whale Dolphins and at least 2,000 Pacific White-Sided Dolphins!" the company wrote on Instagram.
A researcher on the boat captured a second video of the back-flipping dolphin on Facebook.
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Alisa Schulman-Janiger told USA Today that this dolphin did more than 20 backflips while the whale watching boat was there.
According to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Organization's website, Pacific white-sided dolphins are: " are impressively agile, expertly acrobatic and extremely social. True showmen and women, they (are) often approaching boats and wowing onlookers with their skills. Performing spectacular leaps, flips, spins, somersaults and 'porpoising' at high speeds."
