Extended Dolphin Safety Stop on International Women’s Day

Extended Dolphin Safety Stop on International Women’s Day

Once Upon A Time…..

Because it did truly feel like a fairy tale, a dream come true. Four dive buddies, Irene, Angela, Martje and I, were just finishing a very pleasant, but not extraordinary dive at Aquarius Dive Site in the South of Bonaire’s West Coast.

We do a Monday morning dive, almost every Monday, since the beautiful Island we are happy to call Home, became very quiet in the Corona crisis we all know and profoundly dislike (trying to use nice words to describe this horror). We love taking pictures and we do a lot of chatting pre and post dive about photography (Angela teaches us loads, of which I forget most, sorry Angela), Fishies and other Marine Life and of course anything and everything else we want to talk about. Sometimes we enjoy a coffee or cold drink together and Irene’s husband Louis even made us Poffertjes once, but let’s not get side tracked here 😉

Corona safe

This day was no different. We discussed and followed (!) the new Island Rules on Corona and 2 by 2 we entered the water and enjoyed the beautiful reef and what it has to offer for photography enthusiasts. It was a quite ‘normal’ dive, nothing too exciting… Although Martje spotted a fantastic Giant Rainbow Parrotfish that I took a video of and which I may or may not show you later when I am off this Dolphin High….

Nice dive, you know the type: fishies, shrimpies, funny looking sponges, fans and more. We were more or less back at our entry point and sadly Martje and Angela had already left the reef towards the beach. Irene and I were just hanging out a little longer at Safety Stop depth, just looking around what else there was to take a nice picture of before we too would swim back to shore.

End then….

In the corner of my eye I spotted something LARGE. My first thought was that a Tarpon was cruising the shallows, as they sometimes do. But it was bigger… For a split second I even thought: Shark….. now that would have been interesting….

OMG, two Dolphins just showed up there, and I managed to start video and looked around if Irene was still there, yes, good, keep filming! AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

The dolphins were swimming by us, tumbling and turning and showing off and playing with each other and looking at us and picking up a tube sponge to throw around and pick up again. Like puppies in the park, the dolphins being happy to play with a stick. It was an amazing experience and if it wasn’t for the presence of dear Irene and our videos I would already have trouble believing it myself.

But here it is, the video, shot by both Irene and myself and edited to something I hope you will enjoy by Marcel, my dive and life buddy xxx

PS I am very reluctant now to show you anything else, what could ever top this I ask you? I do hope that feeling subsides, because I love sharing my finds with you.

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