Dolphin Address 12
May 6th 2006
The climbing of my years has never slowed down my interest in excitement. For quite some time now a diversion has come to my mind, focussing on the joys of inner fulfilment. Hence I came to regard getting an idea, understanding a concept or appreciating fellow human insight as an orgasm of the mind. Mind you, there is nothing porny in this, it's merely a level indicating exuberance.
Preceding this condition is the challenge of the unknown, the wonder about the working and the search for the key to enlightenment. Plenty of such issues around here, but the secret is to move into a state of mind to identify, select and elaborate the unease of puzzlement, instead of shunning, denying or braving it.
The dolphin seems to be a magnet for such daredevilry. She throws in the gauntlet ever so often, that care to analysis and tenacity of pursuit is paramount for capiching her water ways.
Though questioning an occurrence pursues an ultimate answer, it ever so often triggers a new series of inquiry, not necessarily leading to a satisfactory resolve. But what the hack, it's the journey that counts, not the destination.
Last Thursday attention peaked on all this again. On top of the overhang, moving through the stone wall break we winged into instant excitement on an eye sweep over the Cave bay: two dolphins were synchronising in breath, intermittently appearing in the direct vicinity of Mildred and Trevor. Rather than crazing into my wetsuit and helter-skeltering into the brine I whipped out my camcorder to capture the imagery. My choice proved to be best as within two minutes they went off, leaving the lot of us in Babylonian confusion.
Though close up to five metre, Mildred nor Trevor had been able to positively identify either of the dolphins as Dusty. She has a spot of parasite scar tissue just over the blowhole, but the viz did not allow an ID.
In suit came the questions. Had Dusty finally found her ulti-mate? Could this be the issue of her so often alleged pregnancy? Was she in fact one of them?
As I have never-ever seen her together with any other dolphin in the 5 years of our friendship the above line of inquiry halted and made us pursue the other option:
Could this be visitors, prompting Dusty into a swift flight along the rocks, trying to evade attention by blending into its irregular sonar rebound like she used to do so many times before? But then again social dolphins never-ever to my knowledge came this close to swimmers before.
As the pictures I took mostly show the intermittence of their breath-taking display, I went into video mode and at HQ extracted the picture on this page. The dolphin in the foreground might be Dusty, the other one, though of same size, has a dorsal fin that suggests to be of male juvenileness.
If the bottom line holds that this was Dusty and son, it rather shakes the conception of her being a solitary dolphin and triggers a volley of questions as how she managed to rear it in anonymity.
At this very moment she might be tuning her computer on to 'Dolphin Address' and read the last entry with an ever widening smile. She did it again, stalking and hoaxing us into the void of human capture.
This website is open to sensible conjecture. If you happen to be able to shed light on this, your theory is warmly welcome and we'll all hold our breath on it like a dolphin in deep waters.
Jan Ploeg, WaterWing Research and Development Centre, Fanore, May 6th 2006
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