Echo’s Fin

One of the most recently identified individual dolphins, Echo, appears to have an odd deformity. Echo is very shy and, unlike most of the other dolphins, doesn’t like to come close to you, so we haven’t gotten a good look at his deformity. When we first saw Echo, we thought that he/she had a chopped off dorsal fin, but as we edged closer we noticed that his/her fin appeared to be collapsed. After studying a few of our photos though, Echo’s fin looks like it may be more than just collapsed – Echo appears to have TWO dorsal fins!

It gets way weirder than that. If it’s true that Echo has two fins, they apparently bend over and the ends join together.

We have never seen anything like it before. Echo’s fin could just be collapsed; however, dorsal fin collapse is not common in bottle-nose dolphins.

We’ll keep you updated if we find out anything new.