There are two main options of swimming with the dolphins in Hawaii: 1) A Wild Encounter: you can swim with wild ones, taking your chances if you will see any, how many you will see, if they decide to come close, if they decide to interact with you at all. Or, 2) A Captive Interaction: you can swim with dolphins in captivity, where a company puts you in a life vest, and you wade into a pool and the dolphins will come up and give you a kiss if you give them a treat. You get guaranteed time with them and good photos.
The whole thing reminds me of dating. You can take your chances with all the fish in the sea, or you can pay a beauty to give you a kiss. The later choice has the guarantee, just like a kissing booth at a fair, but she kisses you not because she likes you. Not because she thinks you are special, not because you two have a good connection, but because you have something she wants.
I would much rather support companies who do not cage these lovely beings. I would rather take my chances that they find me interesting enough to come close and play. I personally find option 2 heartbreaking.
But I am also not the type who wants to wear a life jacket wading into a ten foot pool. I live and breathe the sea, as these dolphins do. So I wore weights to help me dive deeper with them, the opposite of the life jacket concept. I want the wild experience, to interact deeper. But that’s just who I am. I understand that others want the guarantee, oddly enough at the painful, stifling cost to the incredible being they are paying to see.
All that being said, we lucked out. Tim and I got exactly what we wanted on our dolphin swim: a small boat with an intimate crew of people of like-minds, and dolphins, lots and lots of them. Three different species: bottlenose, spotted and spinner dolphins!
The first dolphins we encountered were bottlenose. A family of nine or ten. They came right up to the boat to check us out and kept pushing at the bow, challenging the boat to go faster, to race. I was thrilled that we had found them after just a few minutes of searching.
“We won’t swim with these dolphins.” Our captain Erika informed us. “It's just…how to put this…they are very forward. They have been known to play with people, to touch and nibble. They might take you by the arm or hand and guide you down to show you something, or ask you to play deeper.”
“So it’s not safe?” The Canadian woman next to me asked.
“It’s not that.” Erika said. “It’s really rare that could happen, and they wouldn’t wish you harm in any way, they just might not understand your boundaries. The spinner dolphins we are looking for tend to be more timid.”
As we accelerated, the dolphins quickly created a V formation behind us surfing the wave created by our boat's hull. They were thrilled! We noticed two babies swimming very close to their mothers.
Between waves rolling through from the swell, Erika gave us a thorough briefing on how to interact. “There will be small windows to jump in and see the dolphins today.” She explained. “When I say standby, you want to get your gear on and get ready and then as soon as I say ’the pool is open’ jump in quickly.”
Erika explained what not to do during our wild dolphin swim. Some things I knew, like obviously, don’t touch them. Other things were more key to dolphin behavior and were new to me like don’t swim with your arms, and keep your fins underwater so there is no surface slapping. When dolphins want to be left alone, they signal each other by slapping their tails on the water. So splashing about trying to get closer to the dolphins is counter productive.
In the wild, it is up to the dolphins if they want to swim with you. They choose if they want to hang out or leave and they're a lot faster than we are. I had put a lot of thought into how to get the dolphins who swam by to stop and play. Should I bring them gifts or toys? Should I dress in loud colors to be more interesting? Man, it's the dating game all over again. First impressions. You want to show up authentically, so they get to know and like you for who you are, right? Loads of makeup flashy clothing and gifts aren't necessarily as valuable as being yourself on a first date. But what would set me apart? How does one find a dolphin, gain its interest and make friends?
The liability waiver had also made me initial that I would not dive down in the water with the dolphins. As this was my exact intent, I clarified with Erika, explaining Tim and I were dive instructors, what our background in the ocean was and explaining we would be smart and safe about it, if allowed to duck under. She understood we would be safe but explained she didn’t trust other boats to be. Overhead hazards were the reasoning behind the waiver‘s rule on diving, not necessarily because it would scare or offend the dolphins. So I agreed to only dive under if there were no other boats in the vicinity.
After 20 minutes of going up and down the coast we hadn’t found any spinner dolphins as the waves of the swell lifted and lowered the boat and crashed against the shore. We turned around and headed back and Erika radioed the other Dolphin Discovery boat. She translated the garbled man’s voice back to us.
“Okay guys, so the bottlenose family seems to have slowed down and are more calm now. Because we have not found our spinners yet, we are going to let you swim with these dolphins if you want to.”
There was a long pause. I saw both of the other couples look at each other. In the silence that followed, I grabbed my mask. “Okay.” I looked up at Erika. “I’d love to go in.”
“Awesome.” She brightened and turned the boat around to parallel the dorsal fins in the water as I stepped into my fins.
“Okay Sara, the pool is open.” I dove in but didn‘t see anything but the bottom of our boat. Erika pointed to the direction she last saw them and I started swimming, careful not to use my arms and keep my fins under the water. I got farther and farther from the boat. I was in 200 feet of water and all around me was startling blue. I didn’t see any dolphins, the only thing I could see beneath me were jelly fish. I started to examine my choice, remembering Erika’s first comments about wild bottlenose dolphins, feeling a tightening in my chest.
I’ve never met dolphins underwater, so I had no idea how they would react to me and here I was, heading out alone to try to swim with the most aggressive, or forward type. Awesome.
I laughed at myself and took three deep breaths. I don’t know much about dolphins, but I do know they are incredibly intelligent, that they are playful, that they can feel where you are at emotionally, and they respond to playful energy. Kind of how sharks can smell fear - you exude those pheromones in the water and they pick up on your emotions. Going out alone with any kind of hesitation or fear is really not where I wanted to be. I had to change the place I was at internally if I wanted to get to where I wanted externally. Somehow I had to open my heart.
So I did the first thing that came to mind. I started singing. Over the last few weeks a generous Hawaiian has been teaching me the words to Oli Aloha, a song I adore because the the core of it is love. The gist of the song is this: there is someone you love who you have been longing to see and suddenly they are in front of you and you are overwhelmed with love. Oli Aloha is in Hawaiian, and a great challenge for me, but I'm drawn to it and that’s the first song I had. Those who have been snorkeling with children know that you can hear someone talk in a snorkel, and you sure can hear them sing. It changed my energy immediately and although there were still jellyfish, others had hopped off the boat now and were heading my way behind me, and the dolphins were heading my way in front of me. I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t afraid, just excited.
It’s an incredible rush, having dolphins head straight for you, part and move around you. They are so surreal and swim differently than any other fish I’ve been close to - their tail moves up and down rather than side to side and they have such control in the water - seeming to hover when they slow to check you out. I didn’t know which direction to look, they were on all sides and below me. There was no wild, unpredictable, aggressive energy that might drag someone down. Looking in their eyes as they slowed, there was only love, a smiling rush of affection, something familiar which I recognized to be the exact essence of Oli Aloha.
My videos of them are hilarious, even to me. You see ten dolphins rush past me and as each one comes near, I say “hello friend!” and “hey there.” I’m like a kid greeting friends on the street walking past me, minus the wild waving (thrilled to see them but don‘t want to scare them off). It’s impossible for me not to talk to them when they are feet from me whistling, for they seem so interactive and understanding.
The highlight was when I did dive down. No one in the group had done so yet. I dove and mimicked the dolphin’s swim. I know how silly that looks. I’ve been told and laughed at myself but it was all in good play. A dolphin approached and slowed down, then dove down with me and spun. I had no awareness of how deep I went or what my form looked like. I was just so overwhelmingly honored and happy that one had stopped when he saw me and turned around, leaving his family to come play with me.
Tim and I are already talking about going again; and what to do next time now that we have discovered what works best, how to be noticed, how to be interesting enough to check out. And really, it is just as I thought. I’m different. There is no way I would pay to support the captivity of something so intelligent and gloriously happy. I couldn’t support a company that separates such a being of love from its family in the name of profit. But to be dropped off in the open sea in the line of a flow of hundreds of wild content dolphins, is absolutely priceless. So yeah, I’m different. I get that I’m not like the other tourists floating out there. When it comes to dolphins and love, that’s a good thing. So I’m the one who sings in a different language, sings out loud to the ocean, who doesn’t wear the life jacket, but wears the weights in 200 feet of open ocean. In this case, it worked. How do you get a dolphin to stop and play with you? How has anyone found love? Just be yourself.
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