The chin, neck, and underside of this dolphin are a cream white color. The sides of the dolphin are light gray, with the beak, fins, and back being dark gray. There are also dark gray bands around the eyes.
Dolphins are slightly larger than humans, as they are between 2.25 and 2.5 meters long. However, they are actually substantially bigger, as they weigh between 340 and 440 pounds. Males are typically larger than females.
The Pacific White-Sided Dolphin lives in deep, off-shore waters around the Northern Pacific, where it lives on a diet of anchovies, cod, hake, herring, salmon and squid. A dolphin fetus is carried for a year, with the females reaching maturity in 7 years, and overall life expectancy being 40 years. The dolphin lives in social groups called pods, with large groups of several dozen being normal. Extraordinary groupings of dolphins numbering over 3,000 have been recorded. Although found in both the Asian and American Pacific, they travel in localized migratory patterns. Dolphins living in American Pacific waters live near California in the winter, and travel north to waters off Washington and Oregon in the summer.
This variety of dolphin was among those directly threatened by drift net fishing, a practice that was banned by the UN in 1993. Although outlawed, drift net fishing does continue and poses a threat to these mammals. The total population is estimated to be roughly 1 million, but this figure is really just an educated guess.
The Pacific White-Sided Dolphin was first identified and named in 1865. Until that time, it had been confused with its South Pacific cousin, the Dusky Dolphin. Modern genetic study has confirmed that the two types of dolphin are different species.
