Watching the Spectators

Watching the Spectators | Barquing

Piccolo regards us curiously.
“Oh,” says Angela to her, conversationally “You are looking beautiful today.”
Piccolo does not say anything, she swims off along the shore and doubles back, taking us in with her other eye.
“You have to talk to them,” Angela explains to us, “They like to be told they look beautiful, like any woman really.”
Piccolo is sort of beautiful, but the line of tourists standing knee deep in the surf are preoccupied with the fact that they are barely half a metre from a dolphin, not just one in fact, but around ten of them – three generations of battered women who arrive daily at Monkey Mia beach resort to be fed and they could be the ugliest dolphins in the sea, but they would still draw an eager crowd.
Piccolo’s son drifts past, closer to us than his mother.
Angela chuckles.
“She’s not going to like that.” She informs us, “He’s stealing her thunder. Showing off.”
Piccolo nudges him, but he is undeterred, he basks in the flashing and clicking of cameras. The tourists coo and aww at him.
The resort only feeds the dolphins a small amount of their daily food, ensuring that they do not become dependent, and still teach their offspring how to hunt.
Most of the resorts’ dolphins are female – some males do arrive, but few take the time to swim with the tourists. Rules have been established to stop the tourists from actually swimming with the dolphins, as they – that is the dolphins – tended to get cranky, and tourists have been known to be bitten: there are a lot of teeth in there, and while the injury would probably not be too serious, it is a risk that the organizers are not willing to take any more, particularly given that the numbers of dolphins visiting the resort diminished for a while.
“Dolphins might look like they’re always smiling,” Angela warns, “But they don’t have any facial muscles, so it’s very hard to determine exactly what sort of mood they’re in.”
Piccolo’s son is clearly in a showing-off mood. The tourists are lapping it up.
The dolphins are identified by the scars on their fins. Evidence that life as one of the world’s favourite ocean mammals is not quite as picture perfect as some might believe. The females in particular have a very hard time of it, Piccolo herself lost a previous child when it was only three months old. She became despondent, pining for her baby, and in the eyes of the male dolphins became next to useless as a mate. They attacked her, breaking her fin almost entirely.
“When she first came here,” Angela explains, “Her fin was on its side, we thought it would stick like that, but it seems to have straightened itself out again.”
Other dolphins become scarred from less local sources, shark attacks are common, and boat propellers can also be a problem.
A truck pulls up along side the beach and more volunteers clamber out with buckets. Angela ushers us back towards the shore.
“The water is their territory,” she says, “The less you are in it, the closer they’ll come to you.”
The logic is strangely upside down – the further away we get, the closer they come – but it works. The dolphins slip into the shallows, examining us each in turn.
The volunteers join them with buckets of fish, and random tourists are picked out to help feed them. The dolphins, familiar with the routine, wait patiently with jaws open and teeth exposed. Their smiles might be fixed, but their eyes betray their mammalian heritage. Irises dilate, lids half-closed. They click and purr.
“I could be wrong.” Angela says, “But I think that might mean she’s happy.”