Dolphins had been frequently sighted in the Tagus river for 50 days now. It has been incredible the day by day frequency that common dolphins are seen so close to the city centre.

During this time it is clear that all these sightings were just a visit, as the groups quickly return to the Sea after a meal in the river. These are in agreement with the data from past years, only with the higher frequency.
There are many reasons that could explain this phenomenon and most likely it will not be just one. We keep a firm position on the food source hypothesis as the heaviest factor, published on the last article. However some pertinent hypothesis had been put on publications from others, namely:
- The improvement of water quality, which could very well explain an increase over the past decade, but unlikely to explain a large increase since the past year
- The dolphins in the river are just a reflection of an increase in the numbers of the overall population of dolphins in the Portuguese coast
The last one is puzzling and on our last tour we managed to put some light on this subject. Through photo-ID we managed to positively match at least half of the 21 identifiable individuals from the last sighting. These individuals were all sighted together in July 2019, just 1 hour worth of swim from the mouth of the river. We can conclude that these dolphins are locals that had been around for few time.

It can not be implied that it is always the same group visiting the Tagus river, but data points towards that at least that a ‘core group’ of individuals is on the large majority of the sightings in the Tagus river in 2020. It is to be noticed that all of these ‘core group’ individuals were sighted together in 2019.
