There is something alluring about the skin of a dolphin. One day, off Sladeen, near Dingle, I saw a swimmer who, upon seeing Fungi, pulled off his gloves, oblivious of where he tossed them, as he was bent on touching the dolphin’s skin. People often ask me how it feels to touch a dolphin. I think the best-chosen answer to that comes from Horace Dobbs, the founder of 'The International Dolphin Watch', be it not too gracious. He compares touching a dolphin's skin with the feel of a polystyrene box, it's firm, but not hard, smooth, but not slippery.
A dolphin is continuously shedding skin, not in great molts, like a snake, but more like dandruff and, by the translucency, invisible to the naked eye. When on December 2nd last year, a newborn dolphin stranded, of course it was at once thought to be Dusty's calf. Simon Berrow suggested comparing its DNA with that of Dusty. To get this, Kate scraped some of the shedding skin under her fingernails and swam, with her hand well above the water, back to the shore. The sample has been sent to the Marine Museum in Galway, where the DNA will be determined. Thus we hope to attain closure.
The peeling lessens the friction between skin and water, but the skin is more water-repellent than that alone. The water flows around the dolphin’s body faster than it flows within itself. Observe this photograph.
The water flows back from the skin so fast as to create a trench-like dent around the body, pushing up a water-ridge in turn. On the next photo you see how the water in filmy layers draws along the body. It runs off faster sideways than to the rear, because the drop is steeper, modelling wavelets into sheets.
But here you can still see where the dolphin ends and the water begins. Like you can see on this photo, how the water folds itself around the dorsal fin.
I once wrote a poem in which I described myself 'like water vanished into water':
'Like water
I'd like to glide like sunlight through the weeds
and quietly surprise a pike
and flow down like a ripple to the deep
and be like water lost in its alike.
This being dissolved, being one with water is approached in the following photographs.
Compare the 'bow wave' made by the swimmer with the smooth passage of the dolphin.
But this is not the only adaptation of the dolphin. It is hard to film but dolphins can change their shape so their streamline is most effective in relation to the speed at which they are swimming. Dusty is definitely shorter and rounder when she's lying motionless. Imagine us humans to be capable of influencing our gravity. Dolphins were here 50 million years before us. Who knows how we will evolve if we don't self-destruct?
A theory I'm slightly reluctant to accept is that dolphins have minuscule grooves in their skin that cause a very thin layer of turbulence which eases them through the water with less drag. On the following photo you can see a cross-grooved texture, but that is located close to the eye, the only place where Dusty can make facial expressions.
Humans who have attained a measure of spiritual enlightenment are often depicted with halos around their heads. Dolphins have this by Nature, living on the edge of light and water.
We may have freed ourselves from gravity by building airplanes, but individually we remain subjected to gravity. We are in this no more than fallen out of the nest. In water, gravity is nearly negligible. Dolphins are smart, they returned to the water. We're footholding on land, needing ever more gadgets to survive. If you can't be your own dolphin, then be a wave and travel before the wind.