That Time I Spent a Week Swimming with Wild Dolphins, and What They Taught Me 🐬

Stepping off the back of the boat, I plunged into the warm Bahama waters. Within seconds, I saw them, faint gray shapes moving through the clear blue water. One of them broke off and swam towards me, nodding his head and clicking. As he passed, I looked into the eyes of a wild dolphin for the first time.

This dolphin's spots show that he is very old.

A dozen more Atlantic spotted dolphins followed, some slipping by less than an arm's length away. I hyperventilated in my snorkel and my eyes filled with tears behind my mask. I lectured myself to calm down, while I also tried to confirm that this was reality and not just another dream I'd wake up from with a fuzzy sense of longing. I somersaulted to let off energy in an explosion of bubbles and joy.

This was the most magical thing that's ever happened to me.

When I first found Wildquest's website, I bookmarked it as a far-fetched vacation idea. A week-long, all-inclusive retreat to practice yoga and swim with my life-long favorite animals in the Bahamas? Too outlandish, too luxurious.

Then, I received an email offering a last-minute discount of 40% off, and I started considering it seriously. It would still be an expensive trip, but I had squirreled away enough money from my side jobs to make my own selfish dream come true. After a childhood spent absorbing every fact I could about dolphins through books and documentaries, and after years sleeping in a bright-blue bedroom decorated with their images, I'd finally be observing them in real life.

The Wildquest resort is located on the tiny island of Bimini in the Bahamas. We were greeted at the airport by their neighbor, Ebbie, who sang in a deep baritone as he drove us in his boat and dropped us off into the staff's open arms. The shores were piled with discarded conch shells, the staple food here where other fresh ingredients are hard to come by.

It was too windy to go out in the catamaran that afternoon, so I walked across the island's only street and ran into the warm embrace of the Atlantic ocean for the first time.

That evening, I ate an amazing vegetarian dinner while listening to the sounds of a political-rally-turned-dance-party outside (here's where I'd like to get into a discussion on Bahama politics and economics, but now is not the time). I signed up for shared chores and continued getting to know all the people around me.

I thought this would be a solo trip, but when I met the "human pod" I would be spending the week with, I realized I would be far from alone. The twenty-two individuals from all over the world were united by a common fascination with dolphins, but each had their own stories to tell. Some had returned to Wildquest many times.

I loved them all, even the couple who believed dolphins were extraterrestrials. My roommate, Ikumi, was a free-spirited video game artist who also lived in the Bay Area. We treated every night like a sleepover, staying up late talking and giggling.

I hadn't even seen a dolphin yet, and I was already having the time of my life.

The next day, we headed out on the catamaran, stopping for some reef snorkeling before sailing out on the open ocean. We were just about to head home when they appeared, distant dorsal fins slicing through the water. A pod of over 30 spotted dolphins surrounded our boat and rode our bow, showing off their acrobatic skills.

We knew it was time to get in the water when they slowed and gathered behind the boat, waiting for us by the ladder. I was all too eager to jump in.

I had imagined that swimming with dolphins would be like a jogger trying to keep up with a sports car, just gray blurs darting around in the distance. But these dolphins went out of their way to make us feel welcome in their watery world, slowing their balletic movements to dance around us. Time would decelerate to a trickle each time a dolphin drifted at my side, eye-to-eye, before it slid away with the flick of a tail.

At the end of that first swim, the dolphins coalesced near the bottom in some kind of secret meeting before they disappeared into the ocean as quickly and quietly as they came. It showed just how much the swim was on their terms, not ours.

Later that week, we also swam with a pod of bottlenose dolphins, the most famous species thanks to the intelligence that unfortunately makes them so coveted for captivity. We observed them feeding for two-and-a-half hours.

Underwater, the noise was like a swamp full of mosquitoes, a steady drone as the dolphins sonared the sand for fish. When they found one, they pointed their bodies straight down and nosed the fish out in a cloud of sand. Sometimes there was a flash of silver as the fish broke free and the dolphin chased it down, but usually it ended with a barely visible gulp. Nurse sharks and barracuda patrolled the bottom to scavenge for scraps (a risky move - one dolphin attacked a shark with a tail smash for getting too close).

Every five minutes or so, each dolphin would surface for air and pause to examine us. Their echolocation gives them a detailed three-dimensional image of their target, inside and out. When three bottlenose blasted me with a series of clicks at once, I felt overexposed. But usually, I just felt seen, personally acknowledged.

The highlight of this swim was the baby bottlenose. While its mother/aunt diligently rooted out food, it bobbed alongside, sometimes pretending to hunt and other times distractedly wandering off to play. On one of these times, it found some seaweed, shaking it in his mouth before letting it slide down to catch on his tail.

I decided to try an experiment, an homage to my 8-year-old self who believed she could emote with animals. I sent a mental invitation, layered with feelings of welcome and joy and play. To my surprise, the little dolphin rolled on his side to look at me then rocketed upwards. He broke the surface about 3 feet away and swam in a circle around me, wriggling like a puppy before rejoining his aunt at the bottom. The adult skeptic says that this was just a coincidence, but the timing made me smile.

Dolphins are conscious breathers, meaning for them every breath is a decision. To sleep, they only rest half of their brain at a time, so that the other half can remind them to surface for air.

During the week at Wildquest, we tried to live the same way (no, we didn't shut half our brains down). We started each morning with yoga, matching our inhalations and exhalations to our movements. In the evenings, the staff guided us through meditations. And throughout the day I kept bringing my attention back to the filling of my lungs. Breathe in... breathe out...

When you control each breath, you become aware that you're alive. You're here in this moment, thanks to the process that moves oxygen from the environment throughout your body. Suddenly, perceived stresses seem trivial.

Of course, we also shut down our automatic breathing when we're underwater.

There were a couple occasions when the dolphins surrounded me, left and right and below, as though I were a part of their pod. At first, I tried to make myself smaller to avoid accidentally touching them, but I learned to relax. The burning in my lungs faded away, and one of the dolphins brushed against my arm, its skin smooth and rubbery. We all rose to the surface to breathe together, my snorkel fountaining water with a satisfying pffft before I pulled in fresh air.

I could hear the dolphins expelling their own breaths around me. It was like a message: We're here together. We're alive.

I had just graduated from college in an ultra-competitive electrical engineering/computer science program that seemed designed to overstress and isolate. It had warped my perspective on what was valuable in life (spoiler alert: it's not deadlines and good grades). For me, this was not just a vacation, it was a reawakening.

Those dolphins will never know how much it meant to feel accepted by them, even though I'm a member of a species that over-fishes their homes and steals them away to small tanks.

To this day, I try to live by the lessons I learned from the dolphins: Play often, just for the fun of it. Accept others into your pod, even if they're from a totally different environment. And don't forget to breathe.

Video

For those who can't watch it in their country, here's the DTube video.

!steemitworldmap 25.740769 lat -79.287860 long If you've ever dreamt of swimming with wild dolphins, spend a week at Wildquest in the Bahamas. D3SCR <-- Want to know what this is? Check out steemitworldmap.com and this post!

Thanks for reading! This is part of the "That Time I..." series in which I document old memories that I still can't believe happened. I drew many words from my original journal entries in 2012. The photos are video stills from my GoPro and from fellow-tourist Meinhardt's camera, used with permission. This was long before I had a musician for a boyfriend to add soundtracks to my videos, so the music used is "Good Day" by the lovely Priscilla Ann and "Wow" by Thomas Newman.

Also, check out the #popcontest tag for loads of positive vibes from the Steemit community, and find @karenmckersie's latest contest to submit your own!
-Katie, @therovingreader