Brian Skerry's Gorgeous Dolphin Pictures For National Geographic

For the May issue of National Geographic, photographer Brian Skerry got up close and personal with dolphins all around the world. Used to illustrate a story about dolphin intelligence, the gorgeous photographs truly caption the personality and energy of a dolphin. National Geographic was kind enough to give us access to some of the images and captions. You can read the whole story and see additional pictures here.

Spinner dolphins return from foraging to a bay off Oahu, Hawaii. Garrulous and gregarious, spinners gather in groups that can number in the thousands.

Relative to body size, the brains of bottlenose dolphins, like these at the Roatán Institute for Marine Sciences in Honduras, are among the largest in the animal kingdom. Scientists are attempting to decode dolphins’ complex vocalizations.

Dolphins communicate with their bodies as well as with sounds. A dusky dolphin catapulting through the air off the coast of Patagonia may be sending a signal to other dolphins: The food here is good. Come and get it.

Intensely social, dolphins work together on ingenious feeding strategies. Dusky dolphins off Patagonia herd anchovies into neat spheres and then take turns gulping. Two birds, a Magellanic penguin and a shearwater, join the frenzy.

Spotted dolphins swim off the northern Bahamas, where the waters are exceptionally clear. Three generations of these social animals—300 individuals over 30 years—have been the subject of the longest-running underwater dolphin study in the world, led by Denise Herzing.