A Moment Shared Beneath the Surface
It was the mid-1990s and we were steaming back from Aotea/Great Barrier. It was a beautiful hot summer day and the sea was flat and calm. Up ahead we spotted a pod of about 20 Terehu/Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). We headed towards them to check them out. Dolphins are either feeding, resting or playing. We slowly approached the pod and they came to the boat and swam around us and we could see they were in play mode.
We quickly donned masks and snorkels and slipped into the warm water. As soon as we entered, they were all around us. They were doing barrel rolls, swimming on their backs, blowing bubbles and doing spectacular leaps into the air landing back in the water right next to us! They were having some serious fun!
I noticed there was one dolphin that was not participating in playing and as I watched I saw she had a calf with her, a baby about a metre long. Thrilled to see a mother and calf, I swam towards them. When I got closer, I saw that the baby had an old, frayed rope wrapped around its tail. It looked like it had been there a long time as it was embedded into the flesh and the wound looked deep and ugly.
I immediately turned and did the fastest swim of my life back to the boat and screamed out for a knife. I was handed a dive knife and I swam back and quickly found the mother and calf. I thought that if I could cut the rope off, I could save the baby. The mother saw me coming towards them and swam underneath her baby and lifted it onto her head and swam away from me. It was then that I realised the calf couldn’t swim without help from its mother. The rope had cut so deep it couldn’t move its tail properly. After a short distance she stopped and released her baby and turned and looked directly at me. I kept swimming towards her all the while trying to somehow telepathically let her know I was trying to help.
As I closed the distance, she turned and lifted the calf onto her head again and moved away, but more quickly this time. I was getting exhausted, but I wasn’t going to give up. She eventually stopped and put her baby back on the surface and turned to look at me again. It was then that I felt something had changed. I stopped swimming and hung in the water, both of us looking at each other.
New Zealand bottlenose dolphins are among the largest in the world, growing to 600 kilos and four metres. They can accelerate instantly to over 35 kph. She charged straight at me. I felt no fear even though I knew if she hit me I would not survive. I kept trying to project into her mind the thought: I want to help your baby.
She kept coming, several hundred kilos of angry dolphin. At the last possible moment, she veered away and just missed me. I could feel the pressure wave as she sped past. She turned around and slowly swam past me back to her calf and started moving away. I was determined to keep on trying to help even as I was getting more and more tired.
The mother was now about 30 metres in front when she stopped and pushed her calf back to the surface. She turned and looked at me. I knew what was coming and stopped swimming as well. Again, she charged towards me with incredible speed. This time she missed me by mere centimetres. It was so close my mask was dislodged.
She turned around and stopped a few metres from me. We stared at each other and I swear we were communicating. We were inside each other’s heads. I was pleading to let me help, she was telling me that she knew her baby was hurt and to leave them alone. I reluctantly told her I would stop and leave them be. She gave me one last look and went back to her calf and they started moving away. I watched until they disappeared then began the long slow swim back to the boat.
I handed up the knife and climbed back on board. I found a quiet corner and sat down and cried. I wondered if there was anything more I could have done to help. I couldn’t accept what she already knew, that her baby could not be saved.
The last we saw of the pod was as they swam away. At the back was a lone dolphin carrying a baby on its head trying to keep up. Thirty years later, I still cry whenever I think about it. It remains one of the most profound experiences of my life.
Words by Peter Levy
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