Oftentimes there was no Dusty in sight, nor had been for hours. I would go into the water and there she was, as if waiting for me. And this was not exclusive, it happened to others as well, particularly to the regular swimmers. I constructed a daring theory: maybe she used the light refraction of a wave to see what was happening above the water. Ute provided the solution for Dusty's need to breathe: she would slip around the Corner-rocks to do this out of sight.
After three weeks of sub zero, fragile fantasies freeze to arctic icicles that break off through their own weight, pinning the pipe dream down to reality.
So let's face it from the dolphin's mind. Would she be aware of her dorsal fin showing when she surfaces? That would be more than likely. She is even more than intuitively aware of her dorsal fin. I have observed her using it as an inverted dip stick before surfacing in stormy weather.
This suggests that, when she has reason not to be seen, she will want to prevent her dorsal from showing when she surfaces for breath. This is physically quite possible and means on the other hand she at least doesn't mind to be seen when, while breathing, she does show her dorsal.
Trying to enter an animal’s mind to some critics is like an open invitation to be condemned for anthropomorphism. But how is one to understand any kind of behaviour if empathy is excluded? Moreover, I don't have to answer to science when I invite the imagination of my visitors.
So let's awaken ourselves within the mind of the dolphin some more. I take it to be common knowledge that dolphins sleep only with one half of the brain. As they, contrary to us, have to breathe consciously, watchfulness is mandatory. So they switch from one half to the other, every one to two hours. Now if I were a dolphin, I would want to exclude the risk of colliding with obstacles in my 'half' sleep. I would want to follow a safe trajectory that does not have an abrupt ending. Something between a circle and an ellipse would do.
Dusty is familiar with the concept of circling. I've often seen her do this at Pollenawatch in her Fanore years. We understood this to be either sleeping or hunting behaviour. With hindsight I'd vote for sleeping, as when hunting she would be more diverse in her orbits.
If I would be doing these sleeping rounds, I would want to have the waking half of my brain on the outside, as danger would be most likely to come from there. Which leads me to the key question: when Dusty switches brain half, does she also change her swimming direction?
Mind you, this reasoning is specifically tailored to the solitary dolphin. In pods, community vigilance would prevail.
I never witnessed her doing this. She always swam clock-wise circles around the reef, same as at Green Island, around the 'Hammer Rock', though anti-clockwise at the 'Boathouse Bay', around 'Two Bottle Island', but also always.
But when no one was looking, like at night time? Another pitfall opens up, molding reality into conjecture. But then again, sleeping habits of dolphins have been well enough observed to establish the brain half practice. I set a goggle watch at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-whales-and-dolphin&page=2
★ 'Mind in the waters' is also the title of a must have book for Cetacean aficionados. Try Amazon.com.