Kona if you want to dive with Spinner Dolphins. My buddy was there a few years ago on a mid-island boat dive and 100+ surrounded him and escorted him for a while. Recently another member posted about a similar experience.
You'd likely be disappointed in Curacao - the dolphins are kept at the Sea Aquarium which is in the same channel as Ocean Encounters. A trainer (he's called that) brings them out to the dive site and once they calm down he controls them with hand gestures mostly. They do allow them to free roam at all times but it's apparent they're trained. Ours spent about 15 mins at the periphery of the site playing. At first they vanished but watching the videographer I could tell where they were. I surfaced and could see the trainer jumping them for some people on the breakwater - he later explained that they'd likely encountered a wild pod nearby or something else that scared them so he was jumping them to calm them down prior to our visit. Good reason - still worth it cause it's coool though. The pen they live in at the sea aquarium has a pretty high fence - I'm sure it's to keep their investment inside. They also do shows at the aquarium and have a snorkel/beach encounter for non-divers and kids.
We stayed in Lagun for a few days. Two mornings in a row a pod cruised the entire bay b4 exiting - right in front of our property. If it wasn't on the hill 60' up, we might've tried to join them. They did not seem interested in cruising near the mouth of the Lagun dive site although there's a lot of turtles there since the fisherman throw the fishguts overboard in one area - promoting that.
Anthony's Key on Roatan does a similar dive for almost $100 less. We got to meet our dolphins in their pens but it was apparent the fences were more to keep things out, the dolphins could've easily jumped over them. I've read somewhere that AKR is a breeding site for dolphin exhibits in Aquariums but that's unconfirmed.
Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences | Anthony's Key Resort | Roatan
The encounter was about the same, the dolphins played with some weed at the periphery of the dive site, did a few high speed passes over us then settled down to be touched/played with. I went up early that dive and two minutes later so did one of 3 dolphins. He spent a few minutes with our non-diver on the boat then came over and put his face 2' from mine. If I submerged so did he, if I surfaced so did he. Close enough that I could see cracks/discoloration in his teeth clearly. He might've sonared me - I felt something warm in my chest once and my heart seemed to race. Of course I was pretty excited also.
I made some kind of trainer move and he moved in and purposely bumped my chin before gradually swimming away and back to his buddies. Canned or not it was still one of the highlights of my dive career - and I've dove with most of the big pelagics and film sharks as a hobby.
This is one of them - photo credit to my buddy Dave:
There's a trip report in the Bay Islands forum - no more than a year old - where a woman describes having a wild encounter on the north side of Roatan - 3-4 wild dolphins interacted with them at depth for a while. Somewhere east of Sandy Bay IIRC. She posted a picture also.
One of the AKR (and other shops) dives is the Dolphin Graveyard - a sort of restricted passage to a cavern, it's thought that the pod got in there, got confused by all the sonar echoes and died b4 they could get out.
One other place could be Turks & Caicos. Google JoJo the Dolphin - not sure if he's still alive but if so he interacts with divers off Grace Bay entirely on his own since he's still a wild dolphin - just has a human friend he likes on-shore.
We heard them clearly but never saw them once off West Caicos - on the Explorer Liveaboard.
The O'Keefe's used to run a program off Bimini. Snorkel only but they moved to the far east a few years ago to run a dive resort so IDK who currently (if anyone) is doing it now. I think it might be this one (or competition) but not certain. Also it's diving the
reef then dolphin
swimming.
Bimini Scuba Center | Wild Dolphin Safari
I've been a lot of places in the Caribbean and have seen maybe one wild dolphin in my life. I keep hoping...
