Just for looking at (they never affect ships): 28 pods of 8 species to start with (see below; 112 pods of 54 species now, with the fish, sharks, seals, sea lions and otters): bottlenose and spinner dolphins, orcas, and humpback, blue, gray, sperm and southern right whales, 2 to 5 pods each, each pod its real size (bottlenose 8-15, spinners 80-200, orcas 4-15, sperm whale families 10-14 and a bachelor group of 3, the great whales 1-4).
Each pod spends parts of the in-game year in its areas, wandering from spot to spot in each (a leg every 2 calendar days, easing out from the middle over its first 4 days there and back over its last), and migrates between them in the gaps along a sea path round the land. Real routes, for example: humpbacks from the Gulf of Alaska to the Mexican Pacific, from California to Costa Rica and Panama, from Southeast Alaska to Hawaii, from the Antarctic Peninsula to Colombia and from the Antarctic to Queensland; gray whales from the Bering Sea down the Pacific coast to the Baja lagoons; a small pod of 4 transient orcas down the Pacific coast from British Columbia to Monterey and back; spinner dolphins round Hawaii. Where a pod is follows from the calendar alone, so every player sees the same and nothing is saved or sent.
On the World map (from 10 px a degree in), each pod is a loose group, sized in the world like the ships (small: a humpback about 5 px long at the opening zoom, growing as you zoom in) swimming the way it's heading, at most 4-15 animals drawn (by species; a big dolphin pod shows 12 as a crowd). Under water each is a pale blue-grey shape (its outline, as seen through the sea), drawn only where all of it is over open water (and a leap or breach only where all of that is too); now and then a whale or orca comes up to breathe, shown in full color with a puff of spray, or breaches, rising bigger and crashing back in a splash; dolphins leap in arcs ahead of their shapes and splash down. They swim under the ice and storms.
Hovering a pod shows a pointer and its year of routes and areas dashed; clicking it opens its popup (following it): the species, how many in the pod (and how many the map shows), what it's doing now (in an area until about when, or migrating from where to where, how far and arriving about when), its year (each area, from early/mid/late one month to another), how long they grow and a fact.
More species: Fin whales (the Ligurian Sea in summer and off Lampedusa in late winter; the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Scotian Shelf), beluga whales (the St. Lawrence estuary all year, and 30 off the Churchill River in Hudson Bay in July and August, wintering in Hudson Strait), narwhals (Lancaster Sound in summer, Baffin Bay in winter; the males' spiral tusks show), and common (superpods of 150-200 in the Bay of Biscay and off Southern California, golden hourglass on each side), dusky (120 off Kaikoura, wintering in Admiralty Bay) and Atlantic spotted dolphins (the Bahama Banks): 37 pods of 14 species of whales and dolphins.
Fish, sharks, seals, sea lions and otters (the same data, 40 more species in 75 more groups, drawn and behaving by their kind): 25 game fish in schools, the map showing up to 5-30 of each (salmon: Chinook, sockeye, coho, pink, chum and Atlantic, running in to the Columbia, Bristol Bay, the Strait of Georgia, Cook Inlet, Kamchatka and the Gulf of St. Lawrence in season and wintering at sea; tuna: Atlantic bluefin between the Gulf of Maine and the Gulf of Mexico and between the Balearics and Biscay, yellowfin, albacore and skipjack; billfish: blue, black and striped marlin, sailfish and swordfish off Kona, Bermuda, Cairns, Pinas Bay, Cabo, the Bay of Islands, Isla Mujeres, Costa Rica and the Grand Banks; and mahi-mahi, wahoo, tarpon, giant trevally, great barracuda, yellowtail kingfish, king mackerel, striped bass, Pacific halibut and Atlantic cod), leaping clear in arcs like the dolphins (not the halibut and cod); 6 sharks (great whites between Guadalupe or the Farallones and the White Shark Cafe and off Hermanus, tiger, scalloped hammerheads schooling at Cocos and the Galapagos, shortfin mako, bull and whale sharks), alone or in twos and threes, showing their fin at the surface now and then, makos and great whites breaching; 4 seals (harbour, grey, northern elephant and leopard) and 3 sea lions (California, Steller and Australian) in colonies along the coasts, bobbing up (sea lions leaping along too); and sea otters (Monterey Bay, Prince William Sound, the Kurils) and marine otters (Chiloe), floating on their backs. A pod of fish is a school, of sharks sharks, of seals or sea lions a colony and of otters a raft in their popups; the field guide's Sea animals tab groups them (whales, dolphins and orcas; seals, sea lions and otters; sharks; game fish). 112 pods of 54 species in all.
Maritime Empire