Tourist captures video of two extremely rare pink dolphins swimming in a Louisiana ship channel
Bridget Boudreaux was on a boat cruise with her husband in the Calcasieu Ship Channel when she saw a group of dolphins playing in the water, two of which were pink.
“I about fell about the boat,” she told KHOU-TV. “I was like, wow, that’s not a regular dolphin, that’s a pink dolphin.”
While she was only able to capture a still shot of one of them, she was able to capture a brief video clip of both of them swimming alongside a ship:
“It was an awesome experience,” she told CTVNews.ca, adding that “the pictures don’t do it justice.”
“Pinky” the dolphin was first photographed in Lake Charles, Lousiana by a charter boat captain in 2007, when she was just a baby.
Captain Erik Rue and others have spotted and photographed the rare specimen every summer since, even creating a fan page for her on Facebook:
In 2015, Captain Rue caught photographs of Pinky engaging in mating behavior and suspected she might be pregnant.
This most recent sighting of two pink dolphins leads some to believe Pinky has in fact had a baby.
Pinky was one of only 14 pink bottle-nosed dolphins ever recorded on Earth. Her baby, or companion, is the 15th.
Pink bottle-nosed dolphins are believed to be albino, and are not to be confused with two other dolphin species — the Chinese white dolphin and the Amazon river dolphin. Both are colloquially known as “pink dolphins,” but neither are as stunningly pink as Pinky.