Dolphin Watch
The urge to surge
By ANN WEAVER
| Article published on Thursday, June 21, 2007 |
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![[Image]](/content_images/062107_out-01.jpg) |
| Photo by ANN WEAVER |
| Does this dolphin have a plan? What do you think? |
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"The best laid plans of mice and men..." as the saying goes, is fundamental to modern existence. How much time you spend handling unforeseen circumstances is unique to you.
As a whole, though, humanity is unquestionably the plan-making species.
Are we alone?
The constancy of human plan-making raises the question of whether other animals make plans as well. If animals make and carry out plans, it means they have a sense of the future. If they have a sense of the future, it interferes with the human notion that people are the only creatures with a sense of the past, present and the future.
It's not hard to accept that animals have a sense of the past. A horse forever-after shies at the point on a bridle path where it's been previously scared. Your dog rushes to the spot where it once found a morsel of steak. If an animal remembers a past event, it has a sense of the past. Anyone who learns something remembers the past.
Bottlenose dolphins, the species I study at sea, are fast learners with prodigious memories. I don't think it's a stretch to say they have a sense of the past.
Yet do they have a sense of the future? If not, we'd have to believe their perception is somehow forever frozen in the immediate present buttressed by past events. How reasonable is that?
One mellow morning at sea, I had occasion to ponder this. Here's what happened. Decide what you think.
It was mid-morning and gorgeous, before that part of Florida summers when the heat is already pounding you by 8 a.m.
A quartet of bottlenose dolphins rested side by side in a shallow cove wrapped like a half donut around a jetty of mangroves. They were well off the 'road' between the channel markers where boats usually travel. Slowly, they dispersed.
Mother-calf Split and Steve threaded southward. The baby blue seas were so still, I could see their dark silhouettes for many minutes before they faded in the distance.
The two remaining, adult females DD1 and P, gradually headed in different directions and commenced the deep diving we associate with hunting.
When dolphins are hunting, it's hard to take the pictures that document their identity because you can't predict where they'll surface. So I idled nearby, watching.
We hadn't seen P for three weeks. Wherever she'd been, some skirmish with other dolphins left dramatic new slashes on her dorsal fin.
Each female hunted alone for several minutes. Then, as dolphins are wont to do, they gave hints about what they'll do next: They punctuated their on-going behavior with brief bouts of new behavior. It's like when you do the dishes but think about sweeping the floor and grab the broom but think better of it and finish the dishes.
I call this alternation committee work, as if DD1 and P were torn between hunting and the next activity they had in mind.
Specifically, DD1 periodically stopped hunting and joined P. They swam together briefly, split apart and resumed their solitary searches. When they did this a couple of times, I expected they'd soon stop hunting and start doing something else.
As this occurred to me, I was distracted by the sudden appearance of a third dolphin Stick off my starboard side. She popped up almost within my reach, slid under the boat, swung around and surfaced on the port side. Stick had been particularly friendly of late. Out of nowhere, she'd appear next to the boat and hang around before returning to her previous activity. Talk about a privilege! Its price tag is the highest: time spent near them.
Stick left to hunt. DD1 and P swam side-by-side in the road 100 yards away. As Stick slowly eased northward, two more dolphins appeared. The size of teenage Stick and presumably about her age, they rushed together and gave themselves to tussling, climbing over each other like human teenagers in a shoving match.
In the distance, a yacht emerged from a narrow no-wake zone working up a head of steam. I heard its distant engines accelerate. The dolphins did too, undoubtedly before I did. Hoboy, I needed to move. This kind of yacht throws a giant wake. It's never a good day to be swamped.
P and DD1 stopped what they were doing and joined the teen trio directly. This was unusual because adult dolphins here rarely join tussling teenagers. The five milled around a small area just off the road.
The yacht sweeping by could stop what I was doing too by enticing the dolphins to surf its voluptuous bow or wake waves and riding it out of sight. There are many yachts here. Though John's Pass dolphins are infrequent surfers, particular about the boats they choose, this yacht was a surfer.
The yacht steamed at us, gaining speed. But like some Einsteinian thought puzzle, the closer it got, the slower it seemed to go. The five stopped milling, faced away and perpendicular to the yacht's course and lay at the surface. They reminded me of San Diego dolphins lining up like human surfers, ready to catch the next wave.
Finally, the yacht thundered by. One by one, its great round-topped wake waves rolled at us.
Perfectly positioned, the dolphins caught the first roller. Five as one, their slim silhouettes surged by just under the translucence. They rode their natural roller coaster into the shallows as far as they could.
They heard. They waited. They rode.
It isn't often that we see free-ranging dolphins carry out a plan. But it seems to me that that's just what happened this lovely summer morn. We're not alone.
[The entire quote, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” is from a poem called To a Mouse by Robert Burns.]
Dr. Weaver studies wild dolphins under federal permit GA1088-1815, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Send her an e-mail at acweaver@tampabay.rr.com or visit www.dazzlingdolphins.com.
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Article published on Thursday, June 21, 2007
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