Dolphin Address 18
April 26th 2005
If you want to see dolphins in the wild you mostly need patience and therefore lots of time. Today I have been here for exactly five weeks and only on my very first morning I saw twice two and once six dolphins. If they were people you'd call it an act of curiosity. But after this the jack box swung shut and seems to have sunk in the waves. I am here in the bus less than 10 meters away from the high tide, so the ocean takes almost half of my field of vision and I feast my eyes on the water on every quiet moment. Than I focus on everything that does not seem to look like water and this way you can cover a large area quickly.
In my Dingle years I often did this at Minard Head. For days on end I installed myself comfortably in the car on a promising vantage point, but of the legendary 'Minard dolphins' I have never spotted one. I did fall prey to my own wishful thinking though, for if only you look long enough you see them e-ve-ry-whe-re.
To prevent my mind to father unwanted imagination by extended exposure to a relative monotony, I therefore apply the following scan-tech.: things that are continually moving you can stop for a split second by blinking your eyes. Thus you create an artificial freeze-frame that just takes long enough to distinguish a dorsal fin from a wave. If you don't do this everything is moving and subject to doubt. When I do think to spot something deviating I binocularise it.
Distances over water are notoriously hard to estimate. Where in my innosense I hope to discern dolphins a bit later a fishing boat sails by like a nutshell. Out there a dolphin is no more than an apostrophe in a very bulky book. Also the wave size is decisive. As soon as they start building your angle of vision literally drowns.
Even though the surface appears to be empty, it is only a slight measure of this continental shelf depth. You never know where or when something suddenly surfaces, even though it's usually 'only' a cormorant. Dusty often appeared out of the blue and I have suspected her of watching me changing from just under the water. It remains intriguing and even though I saw so many dorsal fins, each time again it is a peak experience and this goes for every dolphin swimmer. As soon as I have kicked this snotty cold I'm going to the bottom for Dusty.
Jan Ploeg, Fanore meadow, April 26th 2005
print version