Dolphin Address 9 2003
3 july 2003
My standard breakfast consists of three slices McCambridge irish stone ground Wholewheat bread, because it's tasty, pre-sliced and in a handy re-usable bag. Two with mature, though still rather flat tasting Cheddar cheese. Therefore I pump a generous squeeze of mustardmayonaise over it and one with apricot jam. All this accompanied by a liter of nearly frozen milk. Echolocation would therefore not show an empty stomach.
Before I went into the water I had seen her cavorting on her own: halves and near-totals out of the water with a lot of narrow turns in which she lashed up a lot of white water. She was obviously hunting, but quite away from her usual forage area and in between she was lying belly up in the sun.
No immediate welcome this time, but at least that gives me the opportunity to put on my monofin without having too much to care that she will take away my camera wing. When I went deeper she came by a number of times, but she seemed a touch absentminded. She was rummaging a lot between the weeds on the seabed and for a moment I thought she was going to bring me another kelp stem.
After a few dives I suddenly saw her swimming with a fish, a sound salmon of some 70 cm. length. For just a little while it seemed as if they were playing. Then she pushed the salmon across her beak towards me straight into the camera. In spite of the anti-fog the lens was condensed except for a small round in the middle, but this is what gives the Hitchcock effect to the agonized fish-eye that flashes by.
Again she pushed the fish against me and it began to dawn on me that this was a gift. I hesitated my hand out, but the animal was slippery slimey and I could not get a grip on it. The fish tried to escape, but was effortlessly intercepted by Dusty. After another failed attempt I decided to seize the animal by the tail. That I could, just about, but what now? The salmon seemed stunned by Dusty's sound canon.
A fish this size you normally could not hold with one hand and in the water. I weighed my options: either eat the salmon raw on the spot or try and reach the shore with it. Dusty swam with me for the full length, sticking her face right into mine or burping, eeking and growling to keep the salmon under sedation. My fear that Dusty would demand the camerawing in return for the salmon proved unfounded.
When in knee deep water I had handed over the salmon to a grateful Irishman I went back to Dusty and pampered her with caresses, strokes and tickles on al those delicious spots that only I know.
Jan Ploeg, Fanore meadow, July 3rd 2003
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