Eye of the Dolphin Hurricane

Eye of the Dolphin Hurricane

I've been recording dolphin behavior for several years, hoping that I will someday keep the scene still, in frame, in focus, and with good sound while dolphins show me who they are.  As I point and shoot, I often mentally tell the dolphins that they have an audience beyond me through the camera lens. I've caught glimpses into their everyday lives.  This week I decide to change my message and today I ask them, "Show me something different."  I wish to capture the extraordinary, the profound. My experiment tests my ability to transmit and the dolphins' sensitivity to my wishes as I record and wait for something new. I'm too slow to film a beautiful bubble ring, not a circular tube of spinning air like divers emit, but a ring of tiny bubbles blown deep and ascending in an enlarging circlet, so I take a quick snap instead.
"Show me Something Different," I ask the dolphins, directing my camera at a few sweeping by over the coral. Moms and last year's babies rise to breathe from the deep. Nothing unusual in the passbys.  Nothing extreme in the noisy active group at the perimeter of my vision. Oh, they aren't listening, I think, but let's see what happens as I continue to film . . .
My guest, mother of three rambunctious boys, and I turn from the blues to the coral garden. The dolphins gather. The action builds, then bursts around us with an orchestra of emotion and energy!  I am enthralled, transfixed as the mass of dolphin bodies suspends in sudden quiet motion before me.
This display of power, coordination, and teasing restraint of so many dolphins in such close proximity IS extraordinary!  The dolphins' natural behavior unpredictably coincides with my wish and request.  Pods stream in around us and form balls of turmoil; a finely tuned balance of trajectories. Lying on the surface, we hover over the center of the cyclone of dolphin bodies. My guest is in perfect poise in the hurricane of movement, in comparison to another observer scared by the proximity of large projectiles.
The dolphins seemed to perform for our benefit, bringing their lives into rich focus before us. The Eye of the Dolphin Hurricane is a perfect storm, clear water, sunlight, shallow coral, and fifty dolphins in a mood to play. This event was different!
I'm an impatient editor.  This sequence is a splice of all the day's footage, nothing cut, in order of appearance. It has a beginning, middle, and end. If you would like to skip the buildup, go to about 3:45-5 minutes to begin.

A dripping wet thank you to all my guests, who offer me the opportunity to get out on the water most everyday! It's days like these when the dream becomes real.

Roberta
Wild Dolphin Swims Hawaii
Kailua Kona, Big Island
wilddolphinswimshawaii.com/