Where's Grayleen?

As a little girl, I always dreamed of swimming with dolphins. I fell in love with them at Marineland in Florida. I told anyone who would listen that they were my favorite animal. I wrote a long report on dolphins in 6^th grade. But then as an adult, I decided not to do the swimming with the dolphins programs you find at hotels and water parks because of ethical concerns about dolphins in captivity and the dolphin-capture industry¹.

So when we came across the Kaikora Dolphin Encounter program, which takes you out in a boat to swim with wild dolphins, I decided to make my childhood dream come true. Dolphin Encounter’s philosophy is that the dolphins are not there to entertain you; you are there to entertain the dolphins. And if you don’t succeed, the dolphins won’t stick around. Seemed fair to me!

Dolphins, dolphins, everywhere!

How do you entertain dolphins? By making funny noises, diving underwater, swimming in circles, and trying to make eye contact. I can tell you, watching us out there would be pretty entertaining to humans as well! The boat would drive us out to where there were literally hundreds of dusky dolphins swimming, jumping, and doing flips. We wetsuit-clad swimmers would sit at the edge of the back of the boat, and upon the sounding of a horn, would all jump in and proceed to swim in circles while making funny noises. Since the dolphin pod moved around a lot, after ten minutes or so the horn would sound again to tell swimmers to get back on the boat to reposition. Repeat. Pretty funny.

Showing off

Swimming with the dolphins was amazing. Just being surrounded by so many of these beautiful and wild creatures was unbelievable. The most I’d previously seen before in one place might have been twenty. Especially once I took off the hood and vest of my too-buoyant wetsuit and could dive underwater (ahh! brain freeze!), I could see dolphins everywhere, swimming to my left, right, under, and over me. A few times I circled around with a curious dolphin. But I couldn’t hold any one dolphin’s attention for long, and I can’t blame them: we must have all appeared ridiculously slow and clumsy in the water. I mean, how long can a snail hold your attention?

More photos of the dolphins and Kaikora here.

1I highly recommend The Cove (winner of Academy Award for best feature documentary) on this topic.