Visit to Encante - dolphins of the Amazon region

Animals, March, 2000 by Sy Montgomery

We went out at 2:45. By then, the heat had softened; it had grown no cooler, but more moist. Fat white clouds had gathered overhead. We wondered when it would rain.

Shortly after 3:00, the first tucuxis erupted from the water. First one, then another, then two together, about 75 yards to our starboard. I had read that they like to travel in groups of two or more; the pink dolphins were said to be more often sighted singly. Nildon cut the motor so we could watch their water ballet: again and again, their sickle-shaped fins sliced through the water, side by side. Another pair came to join them. Perhaps they were hunting cooperatively for fish, one group herding the prey toward another. Or perhaps they were simply enjoying the rush of water against their skins. A single tucuxi leapt into the air, spinning, then crashed into the water with a splash. Large whales do this to dislodge parasites, I had read; but the tucuxis appeared to be doing it for pure pleasure.

But where were the pink dolphins?

"Inia gosta lago," said Nildon. ("The Inia like lakes.") This was why Vera, who had initially begun counting Inia at the Meeting of the Waters, had moved her study to the floodplain lake at Marchantaria, which we would visit tomorrow. Although both species are often found together, the Sotalia prefer deeper waters, Vera had explained, while the Inia prefer the shallower lakes and flooded forests. That is why their backs bear only a low, subtle ridge: "You would be constantly bumping your dorsal fin on sunken branches," she explained.

But this feature also makes the botos far more difficult to spot. They seldom leap like the tucuxis. If they were like the dolphins we had seen in Sundarbans, they would appear to us first as only a motion--distant, subtle, sudden. So we cast our vision wide, like a net, and hoped to catch in it the signal of movement.

Then, at 3:15 I saw it: a low gray fin, a bright pink back, the color of sunset against storm clouds. It belonged in the sky, but was in the water. That pink creature coming out of a river was impossible, my brain said, and although the sighting lasted over a second, it was several long moments before I understood what I had seen. By then, the boto was long gone. I did not even have time to call out, "Look!"

But Dianne, photographer, friend, and travel companion, had seen it, too, and of course, so had Nildon, who was smiling broadly in the back of the boat, by the stilled motor.

We continued to watch the spot where it had appeared, as if the location had produced the dolphin and might offer up another. And indeed, two tucuxis rose out of the spot in tandem just minutes later; they rolled and jumped at the same spot again and again. Perhaps here was some sort of upwelling, I imagined, which attracted fish. Perhaps the tucuxis had been watching the boto, and learned from him where the fish were; perhaps the two of them chased the boto away. I longed to ask Nildon, but did not have the language skill; I longed to ask Vera; but most of all I longed for another glimpse of the boto--his tail, his flippers, his face.