A dolphin in the Neuse River? A New Bern couple caught one on video

A couple trolling along the Neuse River on a johnboat near New Bern encountered a bottlenose dolphin, and captured video to prove it.

Though the marine mammals are commonly found in brackish water, it is less common for them to swim as far upstream as Emily and Dennis Edwards found the dolphin Friday.

The couple put in at the Spring Garden Boat Ramp near West Craven Middle School, several miles above where the Neuse broadens in New Bern. Dennis Edwards said the couple was about a half-mile upstream of the boat ramp when the dolphin appeared.

“People started arguing it was a porpoise and that dolphins don’t come this far up here, and then someone called it a dolphin fish,” Edwards said. “The video was right there and it shows it clearly has a hook fin. Just look at the video.”

In his 53 years in the New Bern area, Edwards said he’s seen dolphins before but only closer to the city where the river is nearly a mile wide.

Edwards estimated the river to be 50 yards wide where the creature emerged and swam within five feet of the boat. When the couple turned around to head back to the ramp, he said, the dolphin was still heading upstream.

So how much farther upstream could the dolphin have swam? Not to Smithfield.

Experts doubt the animal could have made it too much farther past the point it was spotted.

“The first question is what is the salinity around there – how much salt is in the water,” said Terri Kirby Hathaway, marine education specialist with N.C. Sea Grant. “Salinity is so variable in every body of water, depending on wind, depending on rain. It all depends on how tolerant they are to the lack of salinity.”

Hathaway said a bottlenose dolphin may be able to tolerate moderately low salinity for a considerable amount of time – even very low levels for a short period.

The dolphins could have a variety of reasons for swimming up the river, she said.

“They’re possibly chasing food,” Hathaway said. “Another possibility would be parasites – if there are saltwater parasites on their bodies, they may go toward lower salinity water hoping to get them off. But they eventually turn around when they can’t tolerate the lack of salinity.”

Andy Read, director of the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, said a dolphin going far upstream is most likely either sick or is chasing food and possibly getting stuck.

“Further up than New Bern gets tricky for them, physically,” Read said.

This story was originally published June 21, 2017 at 9:53 AM with the headline "A dolphin in the Neuse River? A New Bern couple caught one on video."