by: Dagmar Fertl
Stenella is from the Greek word stenos for "narrow" almost certainly referring to the long, narrow beak. The word Clymene is from the Greek mythological daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.
This species looks very similar to the spinner dolphin, but is shorter and stockier with a much shorter and thicker beak. The dorsal fin is also more curved than the triangular fin of the spinner. This species has a dark gray cape, light gray sides, and a white belly. The cape dips in two places: above the eye and below the dorsal fin. The tip of the beak and the "lips" are black. There is a dark stripe on the top of the beak or rostrum with a "moustache" close to the crease of the melon (if you were to look at the animal head-on, it might look like it has a "T" on it's beak).
Clymene dolphins reach at least two meters in length and weighs about 85 kg.
This species of dolphin lives on the West African coast in deep water.
Very little is known about this species in general. Most of what is known comes from information collected in the Gulf of Mexico's GulfCet research cruises. This species eats small midwater fish and squid probably mainly at night. This animal can spin in the air much like the spinner dolphin.
There is no information on human impact in African waters. This species is sometimes harpooned in the Lesser Antilles (Caribbean Sea) for food. It also caught in gillnets off South America for shark bait and human consumption. It is occasionally caught in tuna purse seines in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.
Insufficiently known.
Perrin, W.F. and J.G. Mead. 1994. Clymene dolphin Stenella clymene(Gray, 1846). Pp 161-171 in Handbook of Marine Mammals, vol. 5: The First Book of Dolphins (S.H. Ridgway and R. Harrison, eds). Academic Press.
Jefferson, T.A. Leatherwood, S. and M.A. Webber. 1994. FAO Species Identification Guide, Marine Mammals of the World. FAO of the United Nations, Rome.
Leatherwood, S. and R.R. Reeves. 1987. The Sierra Club Handbook of Whales and Dolphins. Sierra Club Books, San Fransisco.
Jefferson, T.A., Curry, B.E., Leatherwood, S. and J.A. Powell. 1997. Dolphins and porpoises of West Africa: A review of records (Cetacea: Delphinidae, Phocoenidae). Mammalia, v61 i1 pp 87-108 (22).
URL for this page: http://csiwhalesalive.org/csiclymene.html