A friendly pod of dolphins swam along the Greenpoint waterfront in the East River on Tuesday morning, stunning onlookers who watched on land from WNYC Transmitter Park.
“It was pretty crazy, I was just out there enjoying my coffee on a bench. I couldn’t believe it was real I couldn’t believe that was actually happening,” said Cailin Doran, who saw the marine mammals swimming around 11:30 am at the lawn’s pier.
Doran posted videos of the three cetaceans on Twitter with the apt caption, “Dolphins in the East River. What.” She said they remained at the north Brooklyn waterfront, undisturbed by a crowd of land-bound spectators.
Dolphins, in the East River. What. pic.twitter.com/Lxakfkz9Oz
— Cailin Anne (@cailinanne6) March 23, 2021
“They hung around for 20 minutes, they were just kind of playing, they didn’t seem bothered by anything,” she said. “Everyone was very mesmerized by the whole spectacle happening.”
One of the dolphins was smaller, leading Doran to speculate that it might be a calf visiting Kings County waters with its parents.
Soon, the animals took off south toward the Brooklyn Bridge, and Doran said she’s never seen anything like it in the Five Boroughs.
“They were so far in and how close they were to the shore, almost on the rocks,” she said.
While Tuesday’s visit was a crowd-pleaser, dolphins have historically not done well in Brooklyn’s waters, with one swimming into the filthy Gowanus Canal and dying in 2013, and another washing up dead on the shores of Coney Island later that year.
