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Dolphin Watch
Credible curiosity
By ANN WEAVER
Article published on Thursday, July 19, 2007
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![[Image]](/content_images/071907_out-01.jpg) |
| Photo by ANN WEAVER |
| In shallow water, sharking dolphins swim so close under the surface their dorsal fin is continually exposed, the way sharks are portrayed in movies. |
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It was a gorgeous summer morning at sea. The breezes were easy. The waters were calm.
I was nearing one end of my survey route for the study of bottlenose dolphins when N, a bull who frequents these waters, buzzed by. He swung by the boat but continued at a great pace and vanished.
How strange. He’s usually inquisitive about the boat. The week before, for instance, he stopped foraging and came right over to the boat. Just feet away, he lay on the surface in behavior we call rafting.
Lulling, he lifted his face out of the water and looked me straight in the eye. Then he meandered around us before returning to his hunt. Another time, he tapped our boat lightly with his flukes as he passed by.
Yet this morning, he whizzed past. Was he hurrying towards distant dolphins? Was he fleeing from danger? Had something interesting caught his attention?
As I searched for him slowly, the heat of the day became tangible. It was midmorning. But the temperature of Florida summers can reach the high 80’s before 8 a.m.
When the boat is moving at speed, you don’t feel the heat directly. It’s either nice enough to wear just a bathing suit or it’s not. When the boat is moving slowly or idling, which it is when you’re around dolphins, the heat beats you like a hammer. You get used to rivulets of sweat.
I brushed away some moisture. A substantial Coast Guard vessel and barge were up ahead on my route. I stopped to record N’s behavior and continued toward the rig.
Scanning for N and other dolphins to document, I motored past the rig. The Coast Guard vessel Vise steadied the barge, a working platform for a crane and its tons of supporting equipment. They were moored at a channel marker. Several bargemen sweated over the extrication of an old cement channel marker from its resting place deep in the ocean floor.
A diver’s head popped out of the water then vanished like a dolphin. At least one diver worked the piling from below.
On a good day, the waters on the other side of the barge are treacherously shallow for research boats. But this was a bad day: low tide. Naturally, there were dolphins back there.
That’s probably where N went. But finding out was not easy. I rounded the rig and approached the dolphins with great care since the water was hip-deep or less, mostly less. Many underwater hillocks threaten to hook you. Great. As long as there’s an audience, let’s run aground.
N was back there. So were females DD1 and P. When I first saw them, they were dispersed and slowly sharking about in water so shallow it made my heart sink.
Sharking dolphins swim so close under the surface their dorsal fin is continually exposed, the way sharks are portrayed in movies. This is, understandably I think, typical behavior in shallow water. As I approached, they left the heart-sinking shallows and swung past my boat a couple of times.
Then they started milling around the barge. They were watching the men labor over the piling.
My mind flitted to the first time I saw a cement truck when I was a kid. The people next door were replacing their stone driveway. Kids swarmed their yard, darting here and there, marveling at the gigantic rotating barrel belching its rocky slew.
The dolphins’ movements were atypically swift, especially for DD1 and P. They aren’t staid old lady dolphins, but they don’t usually scurry around the seas. Near the barge, though, they zipped and zoomed, N here, P there and DD1 over there. They’d change places and do it some more.
My mind’s eye saw their underwater dashes in to listen and peer before darting back into the safe embrace of the gloom.
I could see this behavior in my mind’s eye because I’ve seen it for real in a part of the world where clear water makes dolphin observation painfully beautiful.
And I’ve lived the legend of the friendly dolphins of the Island Nation: Decades ago, somewhere in the vast shallow Bahamian seas, divers searching for buried treasure befriended wild dolphins. Or the dolphins befriended them.
No one knows if the dolphins were curious about the divers’ endless sifting of sand or attracted to the resultant food so rudely sucked out of hiding. Either way, the wild dolphins eventually became habituated. Habituation is when you stop responding to a stimulus you’ve learned will not harm you.
The bargemen knew I was there, whether or not they realized what I was doing. Did the diver know the dolphins were there?
Apparently, N had whizzed past for something interesting that caught his attention. Were you surprised to read that the dolphins were curious?
Curiosity is a hallmark of intelligence. Many of us find dolphin curiosity credible. We may even take it for granted. Yet, what if I said that sharks and fish milled around the barge too, watching and wondering what was going on. How would that change your perspective?
Other stories about these dolphins: Exhilaration, Ocean Commotion, Winning at Weaning, Just Swinging By, The Brass Ring, Food Court, Sea Spats
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, July 19, 2007
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