DOLPHINS ON THE TOBAGO CONSERVATION PROJECT!
Added to website: 15 April 2008
A group of volunteers on the Tobago Reef Conservation Project have fulfilled some of their highest expectations having swam up close and personal with a family of Dolphins.
This is a personal account of one of the lucky volunteers:
“Nine of us were coming back from a recreational dive, which we tend to do most Saturdays, when Brent our boat driver saw dolphins in the water, just 10 minutes away from Arnos Vale Bay, where we live. We decided that this was too good an opportunity to miss so we all put on our masks and fins and jumped in. The dolphins were playing on the bottom, but when they saw us at the surface they started to swim up towards us.
We must have spent about half an hour playing with the dolphins and watching them move gracefully around us. I was told that if you are lucky enough to see dolphins, you need to move around a lot to keep their attention. I started duck diving down to them while flapping my arms and legs around, which seemed to do the trick. I know it probably looked ridiculous, but I’m sure no one cared as we were all so engrossed in what we were seeing.
This is the experience I had always hoped for and it was even better than expected. The dolphins were so close I could have touched them. It was such a privilege to see these creatures in their own natural habitat. The dolphins were really friendly and stayed with us the whole time, until we were called back to the boat. They even followed us for a short while as we rode back to the bay.
Safe to say, we were all ecstatic following our wonderful experience and felt sorry for those members of the project who had missed out, but we rubbed it in anyway! I hope that the other members who didn’t get a chance to see the dolphins this time round, get the opportunity to do so at some point in the future, as it really was the highlight of my stay so far.”
By Ava Schiavetta aged 28, Tobago Conservation Project volunteer.
