“There is no question that dolphins are smarter than humans – they play more.” – Albert Einstein

It can be a magical – some would even say spiritual – experience, swimming with dolphins. It’s certainly one you’ll never forget, especially the first encounter. One minute you’re moving along in the water, your rhythm is working, your breathing, your arms and your kick are all in unison as you cut a line through the slight swell of the wave on your way across the bay. Conditions are perfect – clear water, an offshore northerly wind, the sun on your back, water temperature 20 degrees and you’re about one hundred and fifty metres out. Today quite a few of the group are doing the circuit – from the beach towards the yacht club to the first buoy, then out to the bigger orange boat-marker, then across to the little white buoy just shy of the creek mouth and then back to shore. The distance is just over 1km and on an outgoing tide, it should take less than thirty minutes.

Then suddenly out of nowhere – a dark form rushes past you. Or under you. Or both. You’re not sure. But it moved fast, very fast. Something you swear wasn’t there before, is. Or was. You know you saw it, and you know too, that it’s not one of the people you’re swimming with. You also know it’s not a shaft of sunlight streaming through the water, because the form – whatever it was, was opaque.

And in a moment where time collapses in on you, all you can think is shit, it’s a shark. But, before you can collect your senses and do something with your fear, the form is back again. Only this time, it is larger, darker and there – right beside you. But now, your brain interprets what your eyes through your goggles see – is a dolphin! and it swims so close it almost touches you. In a flash you catch the side of its face, its eye, its mouth, the length of its long smooth grey body, its pectoral fin. You even see the fluke of its tail flick by you.

Finally, you blow out the air you’ve been holding, though your heart is still beating fast, because now you are excited and your somersaulting brain says oh my god, far out, dolphin!  So, at that point you stop your forward movement, bring your head up out of the water, and if the others you’re swimming with haven’t already seen what you have, you yell: dolphin! Then, you’re diving under, trying to catch another glimpse. You swim this way and that way, but there’s nothing. You surface and you see the top of the dolphin’s body, its characteristic curved dorsal fin, so you duck under again. Then something swishes past. Another long sleek body, another tail. And then another. And when you think it can’t get any better, you see the little one. Tucked in alongside it’s mother. Perfect in miniature. If you could pinch yourself right now, you would. A million times.

In the excitement, everyone is ducking under the water – trying to catch a glimpse and count the numbers. Two, three, four. ‘How many?’ someone asks. And then it happens. When you duck your head under the next time, you come face-to-face with one of the dolphins. And so, as time stands still yet again – you and this beautiful cetacean are staring straight at each other. There is just over an arm’s length between the two of you and nothing to do but stay still and gasp in awe. In this holy moment you are in, you almost cannot believe what you are seeing, or why this is happening, or even if it is real. But right now, there is nothing else. Just you and this Bottlenose eyeball to eyeball., suspended in time. Then from auto pilot you lift your hand and give a little wave and without a word of lie – you think what you see is this dolphin smile at you.

And soon everyone is in on it, including the dolphins, as you and your human swim buddies bob up and down, in and through the water. The dolphins circle and dive and lift and weave their way through the gaps between you all. It is like they have come to play, and the delight, the movement, the wonder of being with these magnificent creatures seems to last forever. In reality, it is only minutes. Then almost as quickly as they came, they go. Just like that.

When we eventually emerge from the water, we’re all still tingling and the smiles across our faces are as wide as the bay in which we have just swum. The chatter as we dress and sip our thermos coffees is all about the unbelievable experience of awe we’ve just had.  What is it we wonder aloud that brings them here on this particular morning? Is it their curiosity? Is it the noise we make as we move through the water?

Is it that we, like them, like to swim in a group and they think perhaps, we are another pod? Is it that they were feeding further offshore and through their heightened sense of hearing and awareness, they came in closer to check us out? Whatever it was that brought them to us this morning, we know we are lucky and blessed that they did.

Much later, away from the water – you take a moment to reflect on what happened and you realise that these words and even the photographs you took, barely touch the surface of this deep-in-the-body, visceral experience. There are very few words that do this sacred event the eloquent exposition it deserves.

But swimming with dolphins isn’t all awe and magic either. We know we must take great care when they come into our bay. We know to respect the distance between us and them and the power these wonderous sea mammals have. The dolphins in our bay face man-made dangers. It is boats and ski jets that injure them, lines, hooks and fishing nets in which they can become entangled and plastic waste that they may inadvertently swallow.

The local Dolphin Research Institute does much to monitor, record and study the dolphins in the bays of Port Phillip and Western Port.  They also set specific safe dolphin distancing margins. For us as swimmers it is thirty metres, and while this is hard to keep when these curious, intelligent creatures come as close as they do, it is still crucial to respect the boundaries that they set. It is hard to back away from the dolphin’s beauty and there is an instinctual urge to want to reach and touch them, and to follow their travel along the shoreline. But if and when they choose to come in, we know – it is they who are in control. Swift and agile, they make the moves to and around us and all we can do is respect what they are doing. They come at their will, in their time, on their chosen day. And then they go. And that, is how it should be.