Now that Willow is stable and very slowly inching her way toward recovery, I can again post about fun subjects like Hawaiian dolphin swims. On our last full day in Hawaii, we headed down to Kona and boarded a boat to track down (and swim with) some sea life. Spinner dolphins roam the coasts in huge packs, playing, sleeping, mating, and otherwise enjoying themselves. We thought swimming with them in this environment would be much more natural (and less restrictive) than the ridiculously expensive "dolphin experiences" available in the man-made lagoon at our resort.
Spinner dolphins are smaller than the bottlenose dolphins seen at Sea World (and in Flipper), but what they lack in size they make up for in acrobatics. They jump, flip, and spin in many different patterns....it really looks like they're having fun. A spinner dolphin can leave the water and make five full rotations before landing. Since they generally take their time and play along the way, their forward progress isn't too speedy, leaving plenty of time for us to swim along with them and occasionally interact. Our boat would find a pack and pull in front of them. Then everyone would enter the water and spread out, just in time for the dolphins to arrive and swim through our group. If you turn and swim in the same direction, they will sometimes interact with you. Though we weren't allowed to touch them (wild dolphins have a very limited immune system), they often got close enough to touch as they meandered back and forth. When the entire pod had moved past our group, we re-boarded the boat, sped up to get in front of the pack, and repeated the process. We were able to do this six or seven times in total.
It was really a fabulous experience, and I'd recommend it for anyone with the opportunity. There was only one rough moment, when I slipped coming up the boat ladder and went knees-first into the deck. I tore up my knees and shins a bit on the textured surface, and spent the rest of the trip bleeding into open water. D was nervous about sharks, but I assumed the continued presence of dolphins meant that there was no immediate threat.
Here are a few pictures from our trip....
Spinner dolphins are smaller than the bottlenose dolphins seen at Sea World (and in Flipper), but what they lack in size they make up for in acrobatics. They jump, flip, and spin in many different patterns....it really looks like they're having fun. A spinner dolphin can leave the water and make five full rotations before landing. Since they generally take their time and play along the way, their forward progress isn't too speedy, leaving plenty of time for us to swim along with them and occasionally interact. Our boat would find a pack and pull in front of them. Then everyone would enter the water and spread out, just in time for the dolphins to arrive and swim through our group. If you turn and swim in the same direction, they will sometimes interact with you. Though we weren't allowed to touch them (wild dolphins have a very limited immune system), they often got close enough to touch as they meandered back and forth. When the entire pod had moved past our group, we re-boarded the boat, sped up to get in front of the pack, and repeated the process. We were able to do this six or seven times in total.
It was really a fabulous experience, and I'd recommend it for anyone with the opportunity. There was only one rough moment, when I slipped coming up the boat ladder and went knees-first into the deck. I tore up my knees and shins a bit on the textured surface, and spent the rest of the trip bleeding into open water. D was nervous about sharks, but I assumed the continued presence of dolphins meant that there was no immediate threat.
Here are a few pictures from our trip....
The pod we were swimming with had 100-130 members, so there could be forty or fifty in view at any one time. They generally swam in pairs or small clusters, which you can see from this shot.....for a cheap underwater camera, this one turned out particularly well.
This was the dolphins' Jerry Bruckheimer moment, where they all got in a straight line and advanced in parallel.
If my camera were better, this one may have looked like a Wyland painting. As it is, the shafts of light are a bit obscured by lens junk.
After finishing our swimming for the day, we ran across a humpback mother and baby. The baby was only one or two days old, and we got to watch them playing for a bit before heading back to the harbor.
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