- Messages
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- Location
- Lake Worth, Florida, United States
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
I had one of the coolest dives of my Life on Thursday
..I was video/scootering on the Islands portion of Pauls Reef ( off of Palm beach) with a few other photographers, really slow stuff, and then began hearing clicking noises and duck-like sounds
..I thought, could this be dolphins , and headed up to mid-water column and began zig-zagging around in a search modestill on top of the Islands part of the reef
..After about 10 seconds, I saw dolphins!....I began swimming at full speed with my Dive R fins, to turbo boost the speed of the gavin, probably to around 5 mph or maybe 6mph
.I caught up with the pod of about 25 or more Bottlenose, and began staying right at the immediate rear of the group.
A huge, 10 or 12 foot male/bull dolphin, began what I think was posturing behavior, initiated ( I think) to let me know I was too close .I do not think these Bottlenose had ever had humans with them .,
If you see the video, you will see the one big dolphin that comes close to me a lot in the first few minutes, twisting the front of his body one way, and twisting the rear the other way, with some similarity to shark posturing in territorial threat displays .while I have next to zero dolphin experience, this looked to me as if he was trying to give me a message ..and while I was not sure, considering he was as nearly as big around as a large clydesdale, I decided to back off a little, and see if he would calm downwhich he DID. After a few more minutes, he lost interest in me as a threat, and allowed me to swim right into the podas you can see in the video .All in all, I had about 15 minutes swimming with the bottlenose, right on top of some of our prettiest reefs. I am with them 2 feet from the bottom, I do a few 200 foot per minute ascents and descents with them, and the charter boat actually saw me 5 feet under the surface with the dolphins, on one of their air breathing episodes
The video is linked at the bottom of the Table of contents page of www.sfdj.com
If any of you guys knows anything about Bottlenose behavior, I would love to hear what you think was going on with the alpha dolphin J
A huge, 10 or 12 foot male/bull dolphin, began what I think was posturing behavior, initiated ( I think) to let me know I was too close .I do not think these Bottlenose had ever had humans with them .,
If you see the video, you will see the one big dolphin that comes close to me a lot in the first few minutes, twisting the front of his body one way, and twisting the rear the other way, with some similarity to shark posturing in territorial threat displays .while I have next to zero dolphin experience, this looked to me as if he was trying to give me a message ..and while I was not sure, considering he was as nearly as big around as a large clydesdale, I decided to back off a little, and see if he would calm downwhich he DID. After a few more minutes, he lost interest in me as a threat, and allowed me to swim right into the podas you can see in the video .All in all, I had about 15 minutes swimming with the bottlenose, right on top of some of our prettiest reefs. I am with them 2 feet from the bottom, I do a few 200 foot per minute ascents and descents with them, and the charter boat actually saw me 5 feet under the surface with the dolphins, on one of their air breathing episodes
The video is linked at the bottom of the Table of contents page of www.sfdj.com
If any of you guys knows anything about Bottlenose behavior, I would love to hear what you think was going on with the alpha dolphin J
These guys did not really interact with me very much, beyond tha alpha male warning me not to get any closer, untill he decided I was not a threat....After about the 14th minute or so with them, some did seem to slow down or stop if I did, which was cool...I need to learn more about dolphin behaviors, so the next time I get a chance like this, I will know what I need to do to get them comfortable with me, and then I will stay with the pod til the battery runs out on the scooter....Which could also put me a long way from the group of divers I'm with and the boat...not very DIR !
Nice, Dan.
