Dolphins, stars and moon on a Caribbean night..

I watched the life of Pi tonight A 16 year-old Indian boy’s passage to a new life in America aboard a freighter which ends in a shipwreck in the Pacific. He is left to fend for himself on a life raft with a Bengal Tiger. I enjoyed every moment of it, an epic story of high adventure. For some reason it kept taking me back to one of my past memories and  a fond adventure that I experienced on the Caribbean.

We were really into night diving and all it’s beauty, excitement and danger. On this particular night I was in charge of the boat, keeping it anchored safely usually just outside of a very dangerous coral reef with rough waters and the guys would all swim out a distance away and enjoy the view underwater. We used a Lancha which was a great boat for fishing and diving in those particular waters. My job was to keep the boat secure and flash a light for bearings for the diving crew.

This particular night the sea was calm as could be and the sky was ink black. I could not distinguish between sky and sea. It was rather unnerving and I had the sense I was the only person left on the earth.The quiet blanketed me into thinking I was deaf, so silent it was. All at once on the horizon I saw dozens and dozens of fins coming towards me. My first thought was horror and fear for the divers that we were somehow in the midst of more sharks than I had ever seen in one place in my lifetime.

I was just about to signal to the crew when I noticed these fins were circling me and then what I was about to witness has carried me through many fond memories of this experience and the sheer joy and exhilaration I felt. They were dolphins and they were coming explicitly to sing to me around my boat.They jumped and sang for what felt like hours.They let me stroke them, talk to them and essentially be part of their merriment and celebration of life for brief moments.  I’ve never forgotten the feeling I had that night and the profound joy of being allowed to experience it.

I have always thought of  it as the night the Dolphins sang to me.

copyright Estee Miller

“The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and wonder at it”.. Jacques Yves Cousteau