Thursday, January 19, 2006

Jan 17 - Pretty as a midsummer morn

I arrived at Bay1 about an hour after dawn, in fact. ( A little joke for those who remember the words of Dawn, performed by Tony Orlando ).
The bay was beautiful - a clear blue sky and barely a ripple on the surface. There were 6 or so fins about 400 metres offshore. As the visibility appeared perfect in the water I decided to take my new body board out for a spin. It has a plastic portal in it which allows viewing below the surface.
When I got to about 100m from shore the dolphins were waiting for me. The only sound I could hear was my breathing and the Ds exhaling. It was so tranquil. Two of them left and headed closer to shore but the other 4 decided to inspect me and the portal. They were doing lazy rolls under the board, usually with two of them swimming tightly together, pectorals touching. Sometimes, they would move about 20 metres away and lie on the surface waiting for me to get back to them. They were so relaxed. The whole encounter lasted 45 minutes but it was the last 10 which were a special treat for me.
The 4 Ds had moved off about 40 metres when the young ones started playing boisterous games with each other. One would lift the other out of the water and the one lifted would exaggerate that into a backward swallow dive. I could see them chasing each other and the chase would usually end with one leaping vertically about 2 metres into the air. They were having a ball and I just sat and watched, feeling privileged to have a ringside seat to the show.
When they broke contact with me I decided to swim to shore on my back so that I could keep an eye on them in case they turned around. They didn't, but the two which were shoreside of me passed me one on either side about a metre away. As I was on my back I hadn't seen them coming but I'm sure that they knew exactly where I was.

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