aedavidson:
The second week of January I was diving off of a liveaboard...... Out of the blue come 6 dolphins four came to my group two to the other. The four that came with my group started playing right in front of us, in that I mean that one would roll on its back on the sandy bottom one would go belly to belly with that one and another would go straight up out of the water come back down and touch noses with another. I know little about dolphins but it was almost surreal to me. I did manage to get some pretty good pics, they were so close that I actually reached out and touched one as it swam by. They left as quickly as they arrived which was probably good as I had went through about 700psi in 5 minutes
How common is this? What did their behavior mean? I can say that it was the coolest diving experience that I have ever had - in my limited time at it.
Hello aedavidson,
I have had about a dozen encounters with dolphin. Most of the encounters were brief and the dolphin didn't engauge in play. They just swam by and generally ingored me.
However, two encounters stand out.
The most recent was in Sept 2005, off Marathon, FL in the gulfstream (300+ ft). We were cruise north at about 25 knots and a pod of 50+ Atlantic Spotted Dolphin came up and start playing in our wake. The ocean was flat calm, so it seemed they would anything to break the boredom of the day. They start jumping over the wake and surfing just behind the boat in the wake. So, I jumped in the water to see what they would do, they just swam off ignoring me.
Then I tried something different. I jumped off the back of the boat with dock line in one hand and my video cam in the other hand and dragged behind the boat. The dolphin got very excited about this and came up right beside me. I don't know, if they thought I was totally nuts or the coolest human they had ever seen. In any event they hung out with me and my wife while we took turns swimming and dragging with them. We never touched them not that we couldn't. However, I think the big danger with touching them would have been them "dolphinizing" us. IMO, there would have been zero chance of us humanizing them by just touching them....
Check out
http://www.glennpatton.com/images/gulfstream_dolphin2.wmv
http://www.glennpatton.com/gulfstream_dolphins.htm
My other encounter with dolphins that was very remarkable happened about 35 years ago.
In Marathon, FL - I got an opportunty to swim with 3 captive bottle nose dolphins. One big male (400+ lbs) and two female dolphins. The reason I know there sex is that the male challenged me as soon as I got in the water. This big male dolphin tried to intimidate me by swimming at me very fast and turning at the last second. He stayed between me and the female dolphins. There was no doubt that he was warning me to stay away from his harum.
Then a young woman jump in the water with me. Well, what happened next I still find amazing. The big male dophin wanted this young woman for himself. He got between me and her and push her over to the rest of his females. He got very excited and even exposed himself. There was no doubt he was a big boy... He mauled this young women to the point of making it difficult for her to swim. Whenever, I tried to intervene he would make it very apparent that he did like it. It was quite an experience.
So, the lessons I have learned by my encounters with dolphins is that they love us. I don't fear that we will change them. They love encounters with us. They will change us for the better.
However, don't drop the soap, there maybe a dolphin behind you.
Glenn
