Reminder of Swimming with Wild Dolphins

The other day one of my Facebook friends posted a YouTube video about his experience swimming with wild dolphins.  He lives in Hawaii on the Big Island.  To hear him describe his experience reminded me of a similar once in a lifetime experience my wife and I had.  We found ourselves at the right time and at the right place to be swimming with wild dolphins.

Backstory of our Swimming with Wild Dolphins

Our family fell in love with Hawaii in the late 1980′s.  We made regular pilgrimages, usually around Thanksgiving, to relax and enjoy the islands.  I’d long said it was easier for me to give thanks on the beach in the sun with Pacific breezes flowing over me and a mai tai in my hand than hang around a table with toxic family that I didn’t much care for.  I thought my solution pretty inventive.

This particular year, though, I’d taken a big financial hit.  Additionally, I had been traveling so much for so many years and almost constantly with people, lots of people.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m grateful for that opportunity.  It’s just that every now and then, I needed a people fast.  Downtime and alone time was something that I desperately needed to recharge the batteries.  In all our times visiting Hawaii, we never made it to the small island of Lanai.  I read about how Bill Gates booked every hotel room on this tiny island to insure privacy for his wedding.  My thinking went like this:  It’s a small island and not much is going on.  (Perfect!)  If it’s good enough for Bill Gates, it’s good enough for me!

I booked a suite at the beautiful Four Seasons Resort – Lana’i at Manele Bay.  We had a beautiful room with a large lanai and I insisted that it overlook the bay right on the ocean front.  After I had all the arrangements made, I told my wife that we would be in Hawaii for the entire month of February.  A few weeks later, we departed.

Those that know me are aware that I’ve never been a morning person.  With the time differences from the mainland, I was still waking up around 8 (after noon at home).  I married a morning person, however, and she was up enjoying the view watching the sunrise and time to herself on the lanai.  Several days into our stay, I was jarred awake with her screaming my name and to come quickly.  Honestly, I thought the place was on fire or something.  Groggily, I stumbled out onto the lanai and didn’t see a thing.  She told me to look how “troubled” the waters were.  Well, yes they were definitely that.  We just had no clue what it was.  We kept watching.  I was coming to and beginning to be alert.

As we watched for over an hour a back and forth rhythm to this troubling in the bay, some sort of creature jumped up spinning and splashing.  Instantly, I knew what was going on.  You see, not two weeks before I had watched a National Geographic special about the spinner dolphins of Tahiti.  These were spinner dolphins and there were a lot of them.

At breakfast, we asked the resort staff about the dolphins.  They told us that these dolphins came in every now and then, usually once or twice a season but only for a day.  We asked if people swam with them and they said yes.  At this point, no one was.  We went on with our day watching them off and on throughout, but never managed to make it to the beach.  Watching a few others swim made us resolve that if they came back, we were going to throw everything else aside and head to the beach.

Exhilarating Swimming with Wild Dolphins

Guess what?  The very next day, they were back!  We put on our swimsuits and headed to the beach.  There, we rented snorkles and fins.  I managed to procure a cheap underwater film camera (is there such a thing as film anymore?).   And off we went after asking a local if there were any instructions he could offer about swimming with these wild creatures.  All he said is don’t swim directly at them or make any aggressive moves toward them especially now because they have their babies with them.

Okay, I realize this picture is poor.  I’m no underwater photographer and the camera was crap.  Besides, over the years something managed to get spilled on the image and I have no clue where the original negative is.  I just wanted you to try to count the number of dolphins in the shot.  You see, I dived down and tried to capture the sheer multitude of what we were seeing.  IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE!

39 – As best as we can tell, there are 39 spinner dolphins in this shot.  Marine biologists that we met ashore later in the day, who also had been out studying and swimming with wild dolphins, told us that this pod had over 900 dolphins.  We learned that they come into the bay early in the morning to rest, swimming back and forth in calmer waters before heading back out to the vast open ocean for a night of fishing.

Of all the amazing things I’ve experienced in my life, swimming with wild dolphins is right up there at the top of the list!  These dolphins were just as curious about us as we were about them.  They’d swim right up to us, look us over eyeball to eyeball.  I slowly and gently reached out touched several.  Some would swim around us before moving on.  Their sounds were numerous and loud…lots of echo location going on.

Now the youngsters were typical youngsters.  As they swam back and forth throughout the day “sleeping,” every now and then one of the juveniles just couldn’t contain themselves.  They would swim down deep and then up to jump straight  out of the water spinning all the while before crashing back with a big splash.  As the day wore on, you’d see more and more of these kids until eventually the whole pod was spinning and carrying on.  Then it would seem that the entire group would turn out to sea in the late afternoon, almost as one, and off they’d go.  We said our goodbyes!

The next day we looked and hoped they’d return.  The odds of that were slim, very slim we were told.  And sure enough they were gone.  But the following day they did return!  AMAZING!  What a Godwink.  Swimming with wild dolphins was something I’d never really thought about.  But here they were and oh, what an adventure.

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Learn more about this amazing marine animal from Wikipedia when you click on the link at swimming with wild dolphins.