Peale's dolphin is a local specialist: it lives nowhere but the waters around Tierra del Fuego and the southern reaches of Patagonia, which makes an expedition voyage through this part of South America one of the few reliable ways to see it at all. Small and compact, with a dark cap and the throat marking that earned its older name, black-chinned dolphin, it tends to travel in tight, active groups that come to investigate passing ships.
The most consistent sightings on these routes are in the Beagle Channel, where the narrow, sheltered water concentrates both the dolphins and the boats looking for them, and around the kelp-fringed coastlines of the Falkland Islands. Keep an eye on the bow rather than the horizon: Peale's dolphins are bow-riders, and a group can appear alongside the hull with little warning before peeling away again into open water.
