Dolphins ran right next to us today in the ICW, between Camp Lejeune and the Wrightsville bascule bridge!! The waterway is not more than 1000 meters away from the Atlantic in places, and the dolphins come up through the inlets and play in the bow waves of sailboats. We had heard of this for a while, and they finally showed up today!
Truth be told, though, if I hadn't ever seen a dolphin before, been indoctrinated by Flipper and popular culture to regard dolphins as highly intelligent, human-friendly, wonderful creatures, and alert to the fact that we would be spotting dolphins, I might have been a little bit scared. After all, I was until very recently an urban landlubber, one who grew up on JAWS and for whom a dorsal fin poking out of the water and coming at you is normally not a happy squeal-inducing sight.
But I am now a sailor, and so after the initial, irrational eek! I spent the next two minutes cooing, "Hello dolphin! Hello! Hello!"
(And thinking that I was so glad to be seeing the dolphins in the wild and not in some giant SeaWorld tank or Cancun "swim with the dolphins" cove. For reasons on that, click here and here.)
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