One male in particular, a son of Scimitar's, has started chivalrously chasing after any dolphin that charges his mother. Time will tell if this behavior spreads among the whales. It's a different story when dolphins encounter the mammal- eating transient killer whales. I stopped and the dolphins immediately detected the whales. The next instant they were streaking for the horizon.
Resident whales tend to be noisy while transient whales hunt silently.
Dolphins may well recognize silence as predatory behavior. Canadian killer whale researcher Graeme Ellis described one attack by transients where the whales cut off a dolphin from its group and chased it until the panicked dolphin simply leaped onto land and died. In other recent accounts from up and down the coast, fishermen and Department of Fisheries and Oceans biologists have observed transients herding dolphins into shallow bays with narrow entrances, and slaughtering them by the dozen. The relationship between dolphins and the third group, offshore killer whales, remains obscure. I was making lemon meringue pie for a birthday dinner when a neighbor called in a whale sighting over the marine radio.