Bottlenose dolphins are present in most oceans and seas of the world and adapt quickly to several types of habitat.

Their thermoregulation capacity allows them to live in waters ranging from 10 to 32 degrees Celsius, which includes temperate, tropical and subtropical areas of the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, as well as the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea between Europe and Asia. The regions that avoid are the polar zones, but some individuals move through the north of Europe, whose waters have low temperatures.

In the Pacific, their distribution range is from northern Japan to Australia and from southern California to Chile in the eastern Pacific Ocean including all the vast area in the middle.

In the Atlantic ocean, they dwell from Nova Scotia to Patagonia in the West and from Norway to South Africa in the East including all the eastern coast of the United States, and the Gulf of Mexico.

Bottlenose dolphin habitat includes bays, open waters, coastal areas, lagoons, estuaries, tidal areas and shallow areas. They even venture occasionally into some rivers.

The other bottlenose species, the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, is also distributed in tropical and subtropical areas in specific regions of the ocean. This dolphin inhabits from western South Africa to Japan, including eastern and western Australia and places such as the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Solomon Islands and the Indo-Malay archipelago.

The Indo-Pacific dolphin lives near the coasts of continental shelves, at depths of less than 300 meters and around oceanic islands. It frequently visits estuaries and coral reefs where fish banks thrive, and a significant amount of cephalopods live. Therefore it tolerates salt water and brackish waters.

Striped Dolphin Jumping

Image Courtesy of: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Dolphins live in all oceans of the planet and even in some important rivers.

While not all species of dolphins live everywhere, there is a species for each environment. Specifically one of the best-known species, the bottlenose dolphin lives in every ocean of the world except the Arctic and the Antarctic oceans.

The Atlantic spotted dolphin, lives all over the tropical and temperate areas of the Atlantic Ocean avoiding the Artic and Antarctic regions.

The Pink Dolphin lives in the Amazon river.

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Most dolphins live in the ocean, but there are some species which live in freshwater rivers.

While most known species like the bottlenose and the spinner dolphins live in the sea, some other live in some of the most famous rivers in the world like the Amazon river, the Ganges River, the Yangtze River, the La Plata River and the Indus River.

The best known of all the freshwater species is the Amazon Pink Dolphin, also known as “Boto” who lives in the Amazon river.

Different species of dolphins live in the diverse climates that exist in the world.

From the cold waters of the north pole where some populations of killer whales dwell to the tropical waters of the Caribbean where the bottlenose dolphin live.

Even more, some dolphin species live in the tropical temperatures of rivers like the Amazon or Orinoco.

Dolphins are important to the environment because they can be good natural indicators of the biome conservation.

As they are apex predators, they consume several species of fish and squid concentrating in their bodies the possible contaminants in the water.

Therefore, monitoring dolphins and the levels of contaminants in their bodies help scientists to preserve the ocean.

Dolphins are important to the ecosystem in the sense that they are apex or top-level predators which control populations of fishes and squids and keep the balance of the ecosystem.

Lately, the bottlenose dolphins have been identified as sentinels of the coastal marine ecosystems, because they consume of a wide variety of fishes and squids, they absorb pollutants in their bodies when there are high concentrations of contaminants in the water so scientists can have an idea of the status of the marine environment.