Dolphin-friendly invention is flippin' marvellous
By Lynne Kelleher
Beneath the crashing Atlantic breakers off the coast of Co. Clare, two new-found friends from different worlds come together to perform a spectacular ballet.
Dusty the dolphin and an eccentric Dutchman speed through the water, mimicking each other's movements like a pair of perfectly choreographed dancers.
"It's like dipping one foot in paradise, or should I say fin?" 54-year-old Jan Ploeg says.
The human member of this unique underwater partnership is able to keep pace with the most graceful of sea creatures thanks to a special device which stands to make him a fortune.
Jan has patented the 'mono-fin' which, together with water wings, enables him to take part in the aquatic opera, and he is in discussions with a US toy store chain to begin commercial production.
After swimming with Dusty for the first time last summer, Jan sold his home in the Netherlands and moved to Clare, where he lives in the back of a Renault van.
The silver-haired sculptor's unique accessories have enabled him to develop a special relationship with Dusty over the last two months.
He heads to a tiny beach outside the village of Fanore, slips both feet into the mono-fin (a single large flipper) and jumps in off the rocks with his wings.
"Our swims are getting better and better" Jan says. "I think of them as a type of ballet. We're getting to know each other really well. Now we just give each other a nod or a wink and we'll swim off one way or the other."
When he removes his large foot fin to get out of the water he says Dusty looks puzzled.
"She pokes my feet with her nose. She is probably wondering how I can just take my fin off. To her, it's like taking a part of your body off."
"I've spent ten years developing the water wing. I was swimming with the mono-fin and I thought it would be great to have something for my hands."
"I made it out of wood first and then fibreglass. There are holes in it to fill it with water so it is the same weight as water and you can dive with it."
"She was very interested in it at first and even began to take off with it. She couldn't figure out how to move it at first, she was losing it in the waves and then I saw her go away."
"She didn't do it by trial and error. She came back and went belly up and held it with her beak and pushed it with her forehead. Now she goes off with it and puts it hundred of yards away in the ocean."
"I've seen her take people's boogie boards and bring them out to sea. She's not being naughty. It's innocence with her. I have a wooden dorsal fin which I have strapped to my back a few times. She was nudging this with her nose and she pushed me two or three feet in the water."
Jan began his love affair with whales and dolphins 16 years ago after getting a bad dose of artist's block.
He now sculpts whales and dolphins and currently has an exhibition in a Dingle art gallery. But posterity may well decide that his finest creation was the mono-fin.
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