A bottlenose dolphin comes up for air near the Andersons Bay Inlet yesterday.
The dolphin raised eyes and cellphone cameras by swimming around the inlet yesterday morning.
After seeing a video of the creature yesterday afternoon, University of Otago zoology professor Liz Slooten identified it as a bottlenose dolphin.
They regularly visited Dunedin, but were ''far more common in groups'', she said.
Either it had become separated from its pod, or it could be a rare case in which bottlenose dolphins travelled solo and instead interacted with humans, she said.
They were known to travel to Dunedin from as far away as Stewart Island.