PLAYING
WITH DOLPHINS
©
2015 Tor Pinney - All Rights Reserved
There's a place on the
Bahama Banks, far from land, where wild dolphins come to
play with people. I first learned about it from a
long-haired marine conservationist in Miami back in 1975,
and I sailed over there to check it out.
 |
In those days navigation
was by sextant, radio direction finder and a healthy dose of
dead reckoning. Still, I was confident of our
position when, according to my chart pricks, we arrived at
the coordinates I'd been given. This was just as well since
there were no landmarks; we were 50 miles from the nearest
land. In fact, surrounded as we were by unbroken horizon it
looked as though we were anchoring in mid-ocean. But this
was the Banks and I could clearly see our anchor dig into
the white sand bottom just 25' below. |
As excited as my mate and
I were at the prospect of meeting these friendly dolphins,
getting here was as much as we could do towards making it
happen. Now it was up to them. Wild and free, if they came
it would be entirely by their own choice, in their own time.
And so we waited - but not for long.
"Listen, do you hear
them," my girlfriend exclaimed, grinning with excitement? I
did not, my high-range hearing a casualty of earlier years in rock bands. But she was
right. A moment later they were there, 8 or 10 adult
Atlantic spotted dolphins, casually milling around our
anchored boat. We were ready with masks, snorkels and
flippers and, holding hands, we leapt together from our
world into theirs.
They did not shy away
from our noisy entry as wild dolphins normally would.
Rather, they seemed to rejoice in our arrival, swimming
closely around us, diving, twisting, darting away and back.
Happy! We had been forewarned not to touch them - their skin
is sensitive and, of course, arms & hands are unfamiliar in
their world - so we just swam around with them for a while,
awestruck by their tranquility and proximity.
click on any photo to enlarge
 |
I
dove down to the bottom 25' below and several dolphins
dove with me. On a whim, as I started back up I pivoted
my body around and around so that I was cork-screwing
towards the surface. One big fellow, at least a foot
longer than I, matched my spin by swimming around me,
maintaining eye contact the whole way up. I emerged
laughing out loud and immediately dove again for a
repeat performance. This time another dolphin joined in
so that two of them were swirling around me less than an
arm's-length away as I spiraled upward. I was at the
center of this "wheel," turning easily. But they, being
farther out from my center, had to swim very fast to
hold their relative position and maintain eye contact.
This was the only time that I, a sluggish land creature,
managed to even remotely challenge their swimming
prowess, and they obviously enjoyed it as much as I did.
Meanwhile, my mate was diving down a few feet and just
suspending herself upside down underwater. Several of
our playmates mimicked her, everyone holding the
inverted pose until she had to surface for air. |
A group of dolphins
charged past us chasing one who seemed to have a tangle of
sargasso seaweed caught on his dorsal fin. He dodged right
and they all dodged with him. He pulled a hairpin turn back
and his pursuers did the same. Then the seaweed slipped from
his dorsal and was instantly caught up by the nearest
dolphin behind him. Instantly he zoomed off, the group now
in hot pursuit of him. They were playing tag!
Suddenly the one with the
seaweed shot by me and dipped underwater as he passed,
leaving the clump of sargasso floating in front of me. The
group excitedly milled around me, waiting. They wanted me to
play! In lieu of a dorsal fin I wrapped the seaweed around
my snorkel, and swam off as fast as I could. The group was
delighted that I "got it" and splashed and frolicked around
me, pretending to chase. Of course, I was so pathetically
slow compared to them that is wasn't much of a game; for
them it must've been like racing an invalid. So I dipped
under and let the seaweed slip off my snorkel. One
of them darted in, caught it on his dorsal and took off, the
group in happy, high-speed pursuit once again.
|
For a while I just floated, catching my breath, several
dolphins hanging around with me. Then on an impulse I
took off one of my flippers and let it go, just to see
what they would do. As it began to sink slowly towards
the white sand bottom, it occurred to me that if one of
their fins came off it would be a very serious matter.
Well, it occurred to them, too. The whole vibe changed
from fun and frolic to tension and apparent concern. The
small pod gathered around me, pinging me with their
sonar. A couple of them cautiously followed the flipper
to the bottom, pinging it, too. I dove down to fetch it.
True to our no-hands policy, I wedged the flipper into
the crook of my shoulder and dolphin-kicked myself back
to the surface, closely followed by my new friends.
|
 |
There I shrugged it off and again let it sink slowly
towards the bottom. Again the dolphins pinged me, milling
around in an agitated manner, and followed the flipper to
the sandy seabed. But this time one of them actually nudged
it once or twice with his snout.
By the third time I let
the flipper go at the surface, one of them figured it out. I
wasn't hurt. Somehow it was OK that my fin had come off. In
fact, this was some kind of bizarre man-game I was playing,
the game being to fetch the flipper from the bottom, bring
it up and let it go again. Cool! I watched, giggling, as he
worked his snout underneath the flipper near the bottom and,
balancing it there, propelled himself to the surface with an
easy flick of his tail. Suddenly, the whole pod was in on
the joke. The tension evaporated and everyone
was happily darting and splashing around again. The first
dolphin let the flipper go and it began to sink, but they
couldn't wait for it to reach the bottom. Another
swept in, caught the flipper on her snout, shot to the
surface and cast it away. The next guy was already there,
pushing it before him along the surface, the whole gang
vying for a turn. Tag again, only with my flipper instead of
seaweed. Yippee!
 |
But wait, that's my flipper they're swimming away with,
already 50 yards out and the game going full blast. I
swam after them, kicking hard with my one remaining fin,
making about 2 knots to their 10. Luckily for me they
again decided to let the invalid play. One of them
doubled back and dumped the flipper in front of me. |
 |
I quickly slipped it on and, after a couple of pings to
make sure I was OK, they resumed lazing around us in
comfortable companionship.
This was the first of many
visits that week. Most days they'd come more than
once, arriving together in a group of from 3 to a dozen or
more. Occasionally they'd bring a calf under the watchful
eye of its mother, a touching show of trust in their human
guests. Sometimes the pod would vanish suddenly on some
shared signal. Other times they'd stay and play non-stop
until we, exhausted, reluctantly climbed back aboard the
boat to rest.
The days passed,
dreamlike. Ultimately, it took an approaching cold front to
wrest us from our playground and send us scudding for the
shelter of land.
Soon after that episode I
relocated to the Lesser Antilles. It was years before I once
again found myself at leisure in the Bahamas, able to return
to that magic place. By then I had a new boat and a new
first mate, but my old friends welcomed us as if we'd never
left. (The underwater photos are from that second visit.)
This extended pod of
Atlantic spotted dolphins consistently exhibited a curiosity
and a delight in engaging with us, freely approaching to
cavort and frolic, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for
hours, as they chose. One researcher noted, "There are no
walls, no feeding, no behavioral conditioning or
manipulation of any sort, just wild dolphins in their
natural environment interacting (with human beings) of their
own free will." To my knowledge this is the most
interactive, most human-friendly population of wild dolphins
in any ocean anywhere. Visiting them remains one of the most
remarkable experiences of my aquatic life. I look forward to
an encore.
~ End ~
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