Another struck off the bucket list
MALARKEY
Jo & Trevor Bush
Mon 7 May 2012 03:14
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It was a life-times ambition for both of us to dive
with dolphins in the wild.
You see trained dolphins in waterworld
freak shows playing ball and doing tricks for the crowd. But we wanted to see
them in the wild in true David Attenborough style just like in 'The
Blue Planet'. But after nearly 90 dives since taking our Open Water PADI
course in Tobago, we had not seen the mearest glimpse of one.
So this clearly is not an easy challenge.
Despite their well documented intelligence, you cant just call them up on
your mobile phone and request a personal appearance. It is only
with a large measure of luck and patience you end up seeing these fabulous
creatures in the wild. But cripes, is it worth the wait.
We had seen dolphins playing in the surf in the
pass on a couple of occasions when we had been stretching our legs along
the beaches here at Rangiroa. And when we asked the dive shop
folk about this, they confirmed that there is a good chance of seeing them
when the tide from the lagoon is outgoing. During the strong outgoing tide,
(about 5/6 knts), where it meets the ocean current at the
entrance of the pass into the lagoon, there are quite large over-falls. These
over-falls are a bit scary when negotiating in a yacht during entry or exit of
the lagoon but for a dolphin, they are an exciting watery
playground.
Right, so lets go diving with the dolphins
then..............Only one problem with that. Drifting through the pass on an
outgoing tide is so dangerous it is not allowed....D'oh. But what we could do
was to wait outside the pass where the current was not so strong and
hopefully we would catch some stragglers swimming by. Sounded like a plan. So we
togged-up with scuba gear and were dropped off after a wild dinghy ride,
right outside the pass.
It is both kind of eerie and wonderful staring out
into the blue with 20 meters of water above you and goodness knows how much
beneath. But it didn't take more than 10 minutes before a family of 3
dolphins came to say hi. It was just like meeting the 3 bears. There was Daddy
dolphin, Mummy dolphin and Baby dolphin. Daddy dolphin checked us out first
and came right up to Katy, our dive leader from YAKA Dive, face to
face. Katy denies that he said to her in Dolpinish language 'who's been
sleeping on my seabed'. But he obviously considered us harmless because
Mummy & Baby dolphin appeared on the scene only seconds
later. Daddy was showing off by dive bombing around at great
speed while Mummy & Baby went ballistic together. They swam from
beneath us at great speed, belly to belly, dead vertically to the
surface just in front of us, leaving only a trail of bubbles from their
smiley faces. They then breached the surface, probably did some
ariel acrobatics and we saw them re-enter and then disappear back
into the blue. It was a truly mesmerizing encounter but all
too brief.
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