Sometime ago, dolphins were featured in the news. A dolphin was entangled in one of the driftnets; having drowned the fisherman was in a quandary what to do with it. It would be wasteful to throw away since it has some food value but mere possession of dolphin meat would not only mean a hefty fine but also a long imprisonment. The next best thing that the fisherman did was to bring it home and report the incident to the authorities and let them decide what to do with the catch. That is where the news ended.

There are dolphins and dolphins. Westerners or even us interchange the name dolphin with porpoise. Some apply the name dolphin to dorados that colorful blue water game fish. Almost all use the name dolphin for the black, air breathing marine mammal, which are found in large groups in tropical and temperate seas. They belong to the family Delphinidae under the mammalian order of the whales. They are extremely gregarious swimming in groups of six to several hundreds.

The name dolphin and porpoise are often times interchangeable to westerners but some call the bottlenose, dolphins while the blunt nosed are called porpoise. Although the name lumod stands for all air breathing marine mammals to a Boholano, some call the blunt nose as magkabaw. The most common dolphins found around our waters are the bottlenose. Dolphins prey on baitfish's small fishes like the flying fish, mackerel, sardines and squids that in some parts d the world, they are either killed or driven off.

Dolphins locate their prey by echolocation. Since they do not rely on sight, they can find their food even in murky waters. Although air breathing, they can dive deep and long. Their oxygen rich blood can sustain them for hours under water. While free diving humans hyperventilate before a dive to fill his blood with oxygen, a single inhalation through the blowhole on the head will allow the dolphin to stay under for hours. However, if the dolphin stays down for a long time they drown.

Dolphins are playful. The bottlenose leap out of water, frolic around ships and sometimes ride in the bow wave of the sailing ship. There had been tales of dolphins saving drowning people or pushing floundering swimmers ashore. There is no reason why they deliberately try to save human lives but they have that instinct to shove floating objects. There have been stories of dolphins giving rides to humans. The best known modern case is of an eight foot wild female dolphin named Opo that regularly visited a beach near Opononi , New Zealand and allowed small children to ride on her back.

In captivity, bottlenose dolphins are mischievous. They throw objects out of their tanks, squirt water on spectators and when rewarded with fish perform a variety of tricks. But sometimes they can be dangerous when antagonized or handled roughly. They fight over females, ram and bite trainers during training sessions.

Although they can avoid obstacles even in the dark through their sonar like navigating capabilities they are sometimes entangled in drift nets. Because of the ban with all the stiff penalties that the ban carries with it, no one will deliberately fish for dolphins. However, boats fishing for tuna and mackerel sometimes find dolphins dead in their nets. Because of their food value, it would be too wasteful to throw away, to tedious to bring it home just to hand it over to the authorities.