Dolphin Address 30
July 24th 2005
Here I am, with rope hair and dishwash hands, shivering out on the junior table rock in my wet suit, desalinating my uvula and relishing a scrapbook experience.
Because there were seven of them cuddling Dusty I thought to take my chance and glide over the kelp gardens undisturbed by the ruddy dolphin.
The sun shone generously under the waves and the swaying gold was alternated by deep caverns, silver sandy beaches and Japanese like rock gardens. What I had exercised in the swimming pool so often I could put here into practice: I swam like normal, but then on one side with full vision on the vertical rock walls. As you put your orientation on trial the experience is so much more intense.
And of course she came over and stayed around. A cuddle in time but mostly serious deep and watching what interests this flying Dutchman so much in her gardens. Fat sea bass that shyly shot into the kelp, dancing little fishes that gathered the sunlight, sea stars and urchins and idyllic open spots between the golden waving forests.
When two years ago she brought me a salmon of over half a meter it was clear that it did not agree. She pushed the fish in a loud humming and with her beak into a trajectory that led to me.
When I had come close to my step-in rock and did a few after-dives I saw her coming to me in a gentle curve. Directly in front of her beak at a distance of about 20 cm something very thin was swimming. It was a small fish, only some 15 cm long and 10 cm high with ‘rockwashed’ colors in yellow and brown and a mimicry eye on both sides of the belly. It looked very much like a coral devil in kelp version.
In comparison it made me think of that photograph of a gigantic Russian submarine with a canoe peddling by. But the odd thing was the distance between them. This was so constant that it looked as if they were attached to each other. The little fish seemed totally at ease between the largest predators of land and sea and I did not have the impression that Dusty forced it with her sonar. The whole Disney parade stopped at a few decimeters before my nose and was somewhere in the middle of the introduction of a good friend and an inspection by the Mayor of Kelp City. When I reached out my hand in greeting the little fish finned away dignified and unhurried to the deep. Dusty kept hanging and watched with a smile.
Sometimes the kelp looks like a monoculture, but after this it will never be monotonous to me anymore
Jan Ploeg, Meadow Fanore, July 24th 2005
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