A Close Encounter with Wild Dolphins
© Gustasp Irani
My first glimpse of Tangalooma’s famous wild
dolphins was from the boat that ferried us to Moreton Island 75 minutes from
Brisbane, Australia. They arched their black silken bodies out of the water
as though to greet us as we docked at the island’s main pier. I was down at
the pier later that night for an up close and personal meeting with these
friendly sea mammals; a group of eight that frolicked in the floodlit waters
as they waited for the party to start.
Along with the other guests of the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort, the only
one on the island, I trooped down to the beach, picked up a fish in each
hand from a bucket and stepped into the water. Immediately a dolphin swam up
to me. Large, gentle eyes looked into mine; pleading to be fed. I bent over
and held the fish in the water and the dolphin gratefully accepted my
offering in its smiling mouth. And then lingered on a while, I like to
believe to say thank you, before swimming out and repeating the ritual with
the next guest who stepped up to feed it.
The wild dolphins that visited this little outcrop every day of the year to
bum a snack and say hello to us, their distant cousins that lived on the
land, was only a fraction of the thrills that Tangalooma had to offer its
guests. Over two days in this island paradise, I would snorkel with schools
of colourful fish, scuba diving within shipwrecks, ride All Terrain Vehicle
(ATV) across sandy banks and even go tobogganing down desert dunes.
Indeed, still recall the moment I lay flat on my stomach on a plank at the
summit of a sand dune and looked down the treacherous plunge ahead of me.
The moment of panic, however, had passed. I had already committed to the
tobogganing run and focused my attention on doing it right. I grasped the
front of the plank and lifted it off the sand and made sure that my elbows
and feet were well up in the air so that they did not get scraped as I raced
down the dune.
‘Let it rip?’ Alcester, our Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort tour manager and
guide queried. ‘Let it rip!’ I responded. The next moment I was tearing down
the face of the dune. I don’t know what speeds I reached, but it seemed like
over 100 kmp and with the ground whizzing under me, no more than a foot from
my face, it was both terrifying and exhilarating. When eventually I came to
a complete stop at the bottom of the dune I stayed still on the plank,
savouring the thrill of the ride. A little later I was trudging up the dune
for one more zany run down its slope. It was the culminating highlight of
the island safari which started with a drive through dense native forests
that emerged onto a bleak desert in the middle of the outcrop.
Back at the resort I checked in at the resort’s dive unit and kitted up –
tanks, wetsuit, the works – for an underwater adventure. A little boat
ferried us to the dive site at the far end of the island where the rusted
superstructure of sunken vessels spooked the sky above the water. Soon I was
swimming with fellow divers around battered hulls of ships resting upon the
seabed and admiring the new marine ecosystem of colourful coral and tropical
fish that had evolved around these ghostly galleons. I felt my pulse start
to quicken when Lea, our dive leader and my diving buddy, led us into heart
of one of these wrecks. Sensing my apprehension, she held my hand while we
swam through an underwater passageway. I emerged from the ordeal with the
sense of elation that comes from having confronted my worst fears and
survived.
The rest of the dive was a visual delight. Soft coral swayed to the rhythm
of the currents while brilliantly hued fish in amazing shapes and sizes
waltzed around us in this bizarre underwater wonderland where life
flourished in the midst of ancient wrecks.
That evening I slowed down the pace of the adventure and lazed around in the
shallow of one of the many swimming pools that dot the property. I lay in
the water and congratulated myself for following up on the lead I found on
Traveljini.com. I was browsing through the site looking for something in
India – Traveljini.com is the leading travel portal in the country – when I
noticed that it was offering a close encounter with wild dolphins package in
Australia. Before I knew it I was hooked; curiosity turned to desire and
desire to compulsion. I had to get to Tangalooma. Now that I was here, it
was all Traveljini.com promised it would be and more.
Later that evening I was down by the floodlit pier to interact with the
Tangalooma bottlenose dolphins once more. The ranger attached to the Dolphin
Research Centre assured us that the feeding ceremony accounted for only
around 20% of the dolphins’ diet and that they had to depend on their own
hunting instincts to catch fish in the open seas. According to her the
contact between dolphin and humans on this island goes back a long way to
the time when the two cooperated to catch fish. The dolphins would herd
schools of fish towards the shore where the aborigine would catch them in
their nets. Once the catch was hauled in, the local fishermen would throw
back a part of it into the water for the dolphins to feed on.
The next morning I shifted back into high gear when I mounted an all terrain
vehicles (ATV), a modified four-wheel motorcycle with a souped up engine,
and went speeding down a deserted beach before heading for a dusty
rollercoaster ride over sand dunes that waved over the island. It was a
fitting finale to an adventure that lifted me to zany heights and gifted me
with peaceful and quiet moments; an adventure during which I had the good
fortune to be part, if only briefly, of the legendary bonding between humans
and dolphins.
© Gustasp Irani