Though I fancy to describe myself as a passionate soul, it takes an ocean to cool me, I express my affection in tenderness rather than exhilaration.
It’s a tool thing. In my wood sculpturing I work with razor sharp tools exerted with great force, that has to be channeled with utmost caution. Often I have to simultaneously counter my endeavour with a ‘reserve’ muscle in case my knife slips and ends up in my other hand or does damage to the sculpture that cannot be remodeled. Routines concerning awareness also deeply imbed in adjacent respects.
But also in caution I feel I can articulate myself, whereas reckless action may result in the irreparable.
When you observe dolphin pod behaviour it becomes abundantly clear they indulge substantially in tactile communication. Though in many respects Dusty will always be lacking typical species interaction, the tactile dimension is one in which we humans can modestly supply.
There exists a strong opinion that dolphins should not be touched. That feeling is mutual. Dusty takes a long time to gather trust. And the less you’ll try to, the more she will be ready to oblige. Oddly, it seems, there are exceptions. But like in humans, some of us naturally attract, it’s the dolphins emotional intelligence that singles out the exceptions.
Initially I thought that, a dolphin being a large and powerful animal, Fungi needed firmly to be touched for my affection to impact. But soon I found him to respond to the slightest of touch. With Dusty over the years in flybys stroking the length of her body, switching my hand past her dorsal fin to the other side of her peduncle, has become a signature caress for us.
I write ‘us’, because I am not only stroking her. In a way she strokes back by permitting me to touch her. Much like how a cat differs in availability from a dog.
Sometimes however Dusty keeps a distance of a mere 5 cm from my stretching fingertips. She can be exactly there where she wants to be and practically has vision all around her body. Also at times she sinks to a depth where I just can’t reach her with my snorkel still about the surface. She knows from her own body volume, expansion buoyancy pull increases the closer you come to the surface. This tantalising tease seems like one of her wicked woman ways to play ‘hard to get', it also serves to find out how much effort you’re willing to expend on her. But once she succumbs you’re not merely caressing a bag of potatoes. She entirely gives herself, albeit with a wakeful eye.
It took a hard winter to make the Humpback WaterWing. Since in her Fanore years Dusty liked to take off with my Wing I have been reluctant ever since to risk this again, reducing my action to the confines of one hand.
The recent film shoot with the French put an end to this. If need be I was willing to sacrifice one of my old WaterWings to maybe obtain interesting footage. She was only fleetingly interested, hardly touched it, casually eying how I let it float up from the bottom. And similarly and to my relief, she paid little attention to my Humpback WaterWing.
So I finally dared to let my precious Humpback WW go and embraced Dusty with both hands. That’s the part I edited out of the video as I still had the camera running on my wrist and it was mainly registering the surface and the railing on the pier that keeps people from falling into the stairwell.
Though you would expect Dusty would prefer being stroked while laying belly-up this could be a fallacy induced by our own liking. I think being upright coincides with her tendency to imitate human posture. It also facilitates her breathing. But she does prefer being scratched under her throat as her blowhole and eyes are vulnerable. Towards the end of the video you see consecutively a horizontal and a vertical spin apparently to avail herself of my hand on her throat.
To intensify the dolphin experience why not imagine my hand to be yours.