Two Charleston-area cities rank in America’s top 5 for dolphin sightings – Isle of Palms at #2 and Folly Beach at #4
BoatBooker analyzed bottlenose dolphin sighting data from OBIS-SEAMAP, a peer-reviewed scientific database maintained by Duke University’s Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab in partnership with NOAA. Across 356 US coastal locations and 243,809 documented dolphins, Isle of Palms ranked #2 nationally with 16,588 dolphins documented across 2,446 sighting events, and Folly Beachranked #4 with 14,443 dolphins documented across 3,161 sighting events.
The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and the open ocean converge around Isle of Palms, creating productive feeding grounds for resident dolphin pods. Further south, the Folly River and its surrounding salt marshes serve as nursery grounds for dolphin calves – making Folly Beach especially active in summer. Together, the two cities confirm the Charleston coast as one of the most dolphin-rich stretches of water in the entire US…