Being the sequel to a prior forwarded post about whales....
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 09:37:44 -0700 From: SF Gate Newsletters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> MARK'S NOTES & ERRATA Where opinion meets benign syntax abuse... *********************************************** **Dolphins On The Brain, Part II** In the water, swimming with wild cetaceans, humbled and mesmerized http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2002/05/17/notes051702.DTL&nl=fix Not ten minutes after the breathtaking, one-in-a-million humpback whale encounter (see Part I), we find our pod of spinner dolphins. Hundreds of them. Uncountable numbers, really, slicing and moving along the coastline and romping in the water like giddy puppies, leaping and somersaulting and spinning in the air like capricious corkscrews (hence the name) and slapping the water and dashing off, riding the prow of our boat, the world their romper room. http://cetacea.org/spinner.htm Spinner dolphins seem like joy incarnate, light and energetic and refreshingly pure in their enthusiasms and excitement and togetherness. That this is so unusual to witness speaks rather poorly of our own species, you realize, with a touch of sadness and maybe bitterness and much sighing. Then it quickly passes because hey look, dolphins. Smallish and sleek and long-nosed and highly attuned they are, and watching spinners frolic and communicate and move together so fluidly in their natural element takes your little anthro-centric notions of human superiority and spiritual righteousness does the appropriate thing: slaps them right back into the box of humble perspective, where they belong. And once again masks and fins are quickly donned and the boat stops and just like that, boom, we're in the water. This is all it really is. A small group of family and friends puttering along in a funky hand-built boat in the open ocean with China Mike the shaman boat captain and Nancy the nice dolphin tour-guide lady and we find the huge pod and pull alongside and just jump in. Nothing fancy. No secret handshakes or special training or official permits or illegal soft-money contributions to Enron lawyers. You just slip in and float around with these sleek fun mammals for awhile, and be enlightened. And they are everywhere. Down. Left. Right. Ahead. Clusters of two, three, a dozen, moving in tight formations and coming right at you and then darting away, diving beneath and fading into the bluish depths like pale ghosts, slowly rising back up and jumping and scampering behind. Spinners, like dolphins belonging to many other species, are highly curious and highly sensual and sexual and playful and funny. They can also be aggressive and violent and ain't always sweetness and light. Just fyi. Brief moments of apprehension and fear as the dolphins sometimes come right at you and don't stop or turn away until the last moment. Long minutes of being completely mezmerized as you follow a small group farther and farther away, only to finally raise your head out of the water and look around and realize you're about a half-mile from the boat and you're water-logged and dazed and not a little blissed-out. But mostly you just float there, almost effortless, look around, breath, kick your fins a little, be subtly transformed, not really believing this is happening but of course it is because you can feel the water plugging up your ears and hear your breath like a roar in the snorkel tube and every now and then you can't see any dolphins at all and suddenly you realize, Jesus with a mild shark phobia, I'm just floating out here in the open ocean. I hope I don't look like something's dinner. Lift head out of water, spot a dozen dorsal fins slicing the water 50 feet to your left. Head back down in the water, look left, and here they are, checking you out, clicks and squeals and they dart and swerve and capriole and disappear and then you look right and there's another group, same thing but different, circling, clicking, moving away. Amazing. Who needs church? The pod is fast, nimble, curious about the humans but not exactly sufficiently fascinated that the estimated 400-500 adult spinners in this pod would care to stop and hang out for awhile, and hence we get back in the boat a few times throughout the morning and follow them, move down the coast, jump back in the water whenever the boat stops. Three, four hours in the water. Nonstop. Saturated with the experience, drunk on dolphin play, stunned over and over again by particular moments, by surreal dolphin eye contact, by sunlight streaming through the water and creating extraordinary suspended-time montages, rays of refracted light playing off sleek silvery dolphin bodies swimming 20 feet directly beneath you. Images that store directly in the vault of your soul. They could've swam away, but they didn't. They could've ignored us completely, but they didn't. Like the whales, they let us in, checked us out, allowed us a glimpse into another world, into their territory, their much more lucid and fluid and sensual interpretation of the planet. This is what it feels like. Another world. Screw the hackneyed crystal dolphin sculptures and cheesy pendants and bad oil paintings. You just gotta deal with it. Swimming with wild dolphins. It's one of those things. One of those legendary and mystical and numinous adventures New Age crystal-lovin' granola types are always all agog about, one of those things you read about and hear about and maybe even fantasize about but you think you'll never really experience, because your life is rather urban and manic and dolphins are way over there, far out in the ocean, and the connection is just too difficult to feel, sometimes. Until it isn't. Until Fate steps in and the chance arrives and you actually do it and then it seems like the most normal and beautiful and perfect thing in the world. And you wish everyone could try it and then maybe there wouldn't be so much rage and imbecility and aberrant Catholicism in the world even though you know there probably still would be, but it's nice to dream. This is what snorkeling in the open ocean with dolphins can do. Make you wax annoying and euphoric, against your will. Make you wonder at the sad, perspective-impaired ways of the world. Make you wake up the next morning and think you just dreamed the whole thing because no way. You? Swimming with wild dolphins? Did that just happen? How cool is that? And of course, when can you do it again? -- Part I: The Whale encounter: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2002/05/15/notes051502.DTL&nl=fix -- Part II: The dolphins: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2002/05/17/notes051702.DTL&nl=fix -------end forward------ Marvin Long Austin, Texas "Never flay a live Episiarch." -- Galactic Proverbs 7563:34(j)
