Three Dolphin Stories
By: Michael Brein
Tags: Travel Writing, Wildlife, Dolphins, Travel, Psychology

Three Dolphin Stories

Mission of the Goddess:

The Dolphin Story

by Michael Brein, PhD,

The Travel Psychologist & UFOlogist

The Island of Hawaii, Hawaii

1992

Told to me by Alicia B. Defying the odds Alicia met up with dolphins in the waters off the Big Island of Hawaii. One of them “called” her to meet with them. It was as if Alicia was on a Mission of the Goddess after all, both preordained and meant to be a mission accomplished.

“Mission of the Goddess”

Tells Alicia, I was interested in dolphins; I’ve always been interested in them. I guess part of my totem was animals, or whatever. But I’ve always felt I have a real close connection with dolphins in particular.

I used to be part of a group in Mount Shasta, California, where we would meet once a week over nine months, and we would more or less tune into dolphin energy, you could say.

And so, over time, I just kept getting these stronger and stronger feelings I wanted at some point to actually get a chance to swim with the dolphins. I can’t explain it any more than that, but I had been feeling like I’ve been communicating with them telepathically for years.

But now I wanted to do so in a physical form. So I decided to go to Hawaii for a month with the express desire to swim with the dolphins. That was my purpose for the trip. “My Mission from the Goddess,” so to speak.

I went first to stay with some friends on Oahu for a week and had a good time while I got my snorkeling skills back in sync.

And then I went over to the Big Island of Hawaii. On the flight over, I sat next to this lady who told me the place I had heard about where you could go swim with the dolphins was now being monitored by the Federal Government. And people were being busted for doing so.

And this was occurring, no thanks to a woman who was just exploiting swimming with the dolphins and got everybody pissed off at her.

Michael: Did you mention your plans to the lady sitting next to you?

I thought it best to not say anything to my flight seatmate about my plans to her about my intention to swim with the dolphins. I didn’t think it would be a very good idea.

So now, here I was on the Big Island and over in the Captain Cook area. The notorious swimming with the dolphins lady would be charging like $1,500 a pop, an absurdly ridiculous amount of money.

And the locals were sure ticked off at her because it was a national game preserve, after all, and anybody living in the area who wanted to had already been swimming with the dolphins for years.

But what with this woman who has been charging humongous fees to tourists and not putting any money back into the community at all, it’s no wonder this commercial enterprise of charging big money to swim with the dolphins has been such a heated controversy in Hawaii.

Worse yet, a lot of Japanese tourists were going out there in motorboats and scaring the dolphins because the motorboats are terrible for their sonar. It upsets them, and the poor dolphins cannot, themselves, speak up about it.

So now you have the Feds sitting up on the cliffs with big binoculars. And if they saw anybody who they thought was out there trying to swim with dolphins, they would zoom out there and hand you a $500 ticket!

So, now here I am on the Big Island thinking I’m going to be able to go to Captain Cook’s Beach and get out there and swim with these dolphins, right?

And right around that time, it was like the hot issue of the day. Maybe by now, things have cooled down a bit since then; I just don’t know.

So, naturally, I am thinking, Oh, great. Here’s my entire mission from the Goddess going right down the tubes!

Thwarted, but not totally giving up, I find out, of course, through the grapevine there’s another beach, and that the dolphins, after all, don’t just go to only one place. Why would they? Darn. How silly of me, I’m thinking, You just have to go to another place!

So, I discover I can go down to this other beach, a beautiful black sand beach. So, I checked it out a couple of times.

I understand that black sand beach doesn’t exist anymore. A volcanic eruption on the Big Island recently overcame the famous black sand beach and is no more. Nevertheless, this one does.

“You really don’t want to be putting in your article exactly where this place is because it’ll become too populated with tourists and thereby become ruined as well. Let’s just say it’s somewhere on the Big Island off a black sand beach!”

A few times I was at this beach, I would stand there and just start thinking “dolphin,” you know, just enjoying the setting and stuff. And, wouldn’t you know it; they would come! But by then, it was always too late in the day for me to get started swimming out there to them.

They were spinner dolphins: they’d jump, and they’d spin. I decided they’re like the dancing Sufis (a highly venerated mystical form of Islam) of the sea. They’d just jump up in the water, doing their own choreographed things, doing whatever dolphins do, including, of course, their own natural things, while they are out dancing in the sea, such as doing their mating rituals and their communing with one another. But that’s another story.

But why do they jump up and spin and do their thing? I decided in the end no one knows exactly why they do this. I used to think they do it for the pure ecstasy of it, right?

And so you’d see them coming in from a long way off. I suppose you could just swim out there to them, and you would see them coming in.

So finally, one day, I got the chance to get down there earlier in the day. I got to the top of this one cliff, which you then needed to climb down in order to get to the water.

I had my fins and my snorkel in hand, and I made my way down there. I’m looking around, but I don’t spot any dolphins. I’m going, Oh, this is the day because I’m getting very close to leaving. This might be my only opportunity before leaving Hawaii to see and swim with dolphins.

Then suddenly I go, Oh, my God. I see the dolphins are coming!

So, now I’m scurrying down to the beach. I’m trying to stay calm, trying to contain myself because I believe they pick up on all your emotions. And so, if you get too excited, well, they’re going to know. Not that it matters, though.

It’s now late morning, and I can see the dolphins coming in. So, I rush down to the beach. I’m now throwing all my clothes off and getting my snorkel and fins at the ready.

And I spot this man walking to the water’s edge with his snorkel on, too. He’s obviously seeing the dolphins, too.

I’ve never been in these waters. And it’s not a good idea, especially in unpredictable Hawaiian waters, to go out any distance without fins, snorkel, and a buddy because you just don’t know what you’re going to find out there.

So, I run up to this guy, and I go, “Would you wait for me? Can we be swim buddies? Will you wait just five seconds until I get my clothes off? And then we go out together?”

You have to swim out about a mile. You go through the breakers and then swim out to where they come in.

We’re out there, and there’re about six other people out there as well. And everybody’s looking and swimming around and shouting, “Do you see them yet? Do you see them?”

“No, I don’t see them,” and so on.

Well, I’m, of course, very excited. But I’m also a little discouraged because there are lots of stories of how the dolphins play and toy with people where people are unsure about the dolphins as they swim in.

And as soon as the people get into the water to see them, the dolphins reverse and begin to swim back out. It’s almost like a game with them, you know. It’s as if the dolphins are thinking, Oh, yea? You want to see us?

Okay, okay. Well, I thought, well, maybe this is what is happening here with me.

So, I get really excited. And then I get calm, really calm inside. I just picture in my mind a flying heart, and I project that thought out there.

I am very still, and suddenly I hear inside my head, “Swim over here!”

I look quizzically at my partner, and I signal him to swim over. I don’t shout out to him what is happening because I don’t want to change the fung shui (the harmonization) of the moment.

We swim in the direction I am pointing to. And as soon as we get there, two dolphins come up on my right. They just come right up. Perfect.

They swim around me for about ten minutes. It’s just unbelievable. And we apparently have a major communication of some sort going on among us.

But the full impact of it does not emerge until sometime later.

And it seems the dolphins are communicating with me. And it is all unbelievable. Just the synchronicity of these two dolphins. They are like in perfect harmony with me.

I think it’s one of the messages they are telling me, “You humans can have harmony in your relationships with one another. Look at how we can do it with each other.”

And you know, they just circle for a while. And just as they swim into us, they now swim off. But then shortly after, the rest of the pod arrives, and now they are all swimming around and underneath us.

The thing with dolphins is they sonar you, they click. And as they are ‘clicking you,’ you feel it going through your body; they are checking you out. And all the while they’re likely talking to one another. You actually hear them before you see them.

Well, this whole thing was about being harmonious. But, again, my realizations didn’t come until later. It was like a time-release capsule communication.

I believe dolphins, as humans, are specialized in that there are dolphins that are coming into the water to help people to birth, and they’re working with disabled people as well.

And I think this reflects in their interactions with people, especially that they’re allowing people to touch them, and so on. For instance, I’ve heard in the Bahamas, dolphins have actually let disabled kids go underwater with them and touch them, and so on.

And these kids often have life-changing experiences as a result. I think dolphins also have their healers and their special distinct groups.

But this one group of dolphins that I was with was apparently a relatively simple group out there, not just some specialized group, per se.

My happenstance partner on that day was just someone from the community who told me he’d been trying to see the dolphins for at least six years.

But it wasn’t until he swam out with me he was actually able to do so. He was just ecstatic about it. And for some reason, no one else in that group of six people out there not far from us saw them just as we did.

I do believe, after all is said and done, my “Mission of the Goddess” on that day was a mission accomplished.

Wild women, wild dolphins

Story 2:

Wild Women, Wild Dolphins:

A Union of Spirit

Makaha, Oahu, Hawaii

2003

Told to me by Billie W. This is about wild women and wild dolphins. In 2003, I went to Hawaii with three other girlfriends. We’ve been friends since grade school and decided it was time we all got together again and went on an adventure.

Two of us are from Seattle, Washington, and I’m from southwest Washington. Our other friend Sherry is from New York.

We all met on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Then we went to the Makaha Beach area. I’ve got a good friend who has a condo up there where we spent a week. Of course, the beaches are absolutely gorgeous over there, and there are few tourists.

This is exactly what we wanted because I like to mingle with the natives when they let you. And, fortunately, this we were able to do.

One of the things we wanted to do was go out on a boat and watch the whales and dolphins.

At first, we checked on a few boats, but, for one reason or other, it never quite worked out. Either it was the wrong time or they were fully booked or we had something else going on. So this went on for three days.

So we started just going to the beach and asking people about the dolphins. And we discovered something interesting about the local spinner dolphins: they would travel around the island every day, usually beginning in the morning around 10 and one or so.

They’d supposedly circle around the entire island. And so once a day, they’d gather around the Makaha Beach area.

So we got this bright idea. Why not let’s just swim out there and check them out, you know, and see what happens?

I’m a swimmer, but I don’t swim every day. So I’m not such a terrific swimmer. So we’d rent boogie boards. We’d have fins, but when I tried to walk in the water with fins, they’d never stay on, so I ultimately threw them off.

We had two boogie boards and three of us women.

I’d say we were more courageous about doing this maybe than smart. I mean, that it’s ballsy swimming out there since Makaha is noted for some of the world’s biggest waves on occasion. And there are all kinds of strange currents, aren’t there? So, it was perhaps a case of “more balls than brains, maybe?”

We had intent and purpose. And looking back, it was — this active intent of ours which got us out there in the first place — in reality more an act of stupidity?

We started swimming out. The dolphins were out there. And there was one guy already out there in a little kayak. And so we just started swimming and swimming out and swimming, probably about a half-mile or so.

The water was fairly calm, and no lifeguards were trying to dissuade us from doing this. We did check with one lifeguard who knew what we were going to do. He did say they’d spotted a shark the day before because apparently for whatever reason, sometimes there’re sharks where there’re dolphins.

We were single- and perhaps even simple-minded folks at the time. And we only thought about the real dangers of it later. Yeah, it was definitely on our minds, but anyway, we swam out there, and the dolphins were about still a half-mile ahead of us, and I thought, Oh my gosh, we missed them!

But, believe it or not, we started singing “Amazing Grace.”

I cannot tell you why, but I cannot, for the life of me, carry a tune in a bucket. Could it be because of my great singing they turned around and started swimming back? Surely, no, but it does sound good, huh?

So, here we were, in our hearts, calling and beckoning the dolphins to come to us, my God, and they start circling us!

They came, and they made a pass at us, moving along the beach, and then they came back. And on their second pass, they made this great big wide sweep around us.

Michael: How did you feel about that?

I’m so excited. I’m going, “Oh, my gosh, there they are! There they are!”

I think I squealed once, and my friend freaked out thinking I saw a shark. But no shark!

They’re spinner dolphins. So they would spin up in the air and jump up, and there were probably about 10 or 12 of them.

So they start this circling of us. And each time they made a complete circle, they’d get closer. And they did this probably about five or six times. And they were coming closer and closer until I’d looked down and saw one swimming right under us.

And one would jump right out… I mean, they were like only four or five feet from us.

And they were totally aware of us. And, in that instant, you just go into this magical moment; you lose the sense of time. I mean, I can’t even tell you how long this happened. But it was so exhilarating.

And then the next thing, they just swam off going on down the beach.

And then, suddenly, reality set in!

Because when we turned around and saw the beach — which we had paid no attention to for the last hour or so — my gosh, we floated down the beach. And the waves were now starting to get a little more choppy. It was getting late. It was probably around two o’clock, or thereabouts.

And so we start the swimming back in, and we discover it’s like, gosh, we’re a long way off.

So we swam and realized we were no longer in front of this sandy beach. We were now where it started to get rocky. And my one friend made it in okay, but she did get a gash on her leg from a rock.

I gave my other friend the boogie board, and I was just gonna float in. Finally, we made it to where you could stand up. But then these high waves were coming in. I was the last one in.

One would think you could just get up and walk. But I turned around and here comes this giant crashing wave, and I would just hold my breath and say, Okay, take me in.

This happened about three or four times but was finally able to climb back up onto the shore. I clambered out onto the beach, and I’m huffing and puffing because I’m not so young anymore.

And the lifeguard was sitting there, taking all of this in, watching us on his lifeguard stand.

He was evidently concerned enough such that he was parked there when there weren’t any other swimmers — just waiting for us to come in.

I approached him and said, “You know, I needed to be saved out there. I needed you to come out and rescue me. What’s going on?”

He goes, “But you didn’t wave.” He said, “That’s the signal; you’ve got to wave.”

I just looked at him and laughed. But yes, Yeah, apparently he saw I was making it out okay. I guess all’s well that ends well. I’m sure if I wasn’t making it in he might have come out there to bring me in.

In retrospect, I’m so glad I did it. So absolutely glad I did it because it was on my bucket list of things to do during my life. And so it was such a wonderful accomplishment to do something you’ve always wanted to do and do it in such an unconventional way, you know.

We didn’t stand up on the boat like gawking tourists just to watch; we were out there with them and they knew us.

I felt just a union of spirit. I didn’t hear voices or anything like that, but it’s a feeling of unity of something so big and powerful, yet feeling so safe. And they were friendly and not dangerous to us.

Although I mean, we did hear stories later: dolphins ARE not always necessarily friendly. Yeah.

For instance, one of the natives we started talking with on the beach who lived on the beach said he would actually go out and swim and watch them birth. He grew up with them and stuff.

He was so against the tourist boats because he said it’s like chasing them, and so from that perspective, we were glad we didn’t take part in that.

But he did say there are instances where the dolphins will turn and actually harm a swimmer which I think is rare.

Like maybe bump into them, as if to say… you know, like, “go away! Yes, go away!”

But our dolphins? They were wonderful.

Michael: What was the ‘stupid’ aspect about you doing it?

Probably going out so far without proper swimming gear with the fins and each one of us having a boogie board and not being seasoned enough swimmers in the first place. The natives don’t do that.

“Ophelia,” the loggerhead turtle

Story 3

“Ophelia”

Rescuing a Loggerhead Turtle

Harbor Island, South Carolina

2005

Told to me by Michelle W. and Renee E in September 2005. A bunch of us, old friends for over 25 years, traveled to Harbor Island, South Carolina, one of the Sea Islands, for a reunion from Indianapolis and other parts. We were spending a week together.

This coincides with hurricane Ophelia, which was coming in from the Atlantic, just after Hurricane Katrina. And so, of course, everybody’s awareness was heightened.

We were all excited about the adventure of us all being together again that we had many discussions about. We were wondering should we turn back, and we decided no. We had faith we were going to get through Ophelia, and it was going to be a wonderful trip.

We were of course a bit wary of Hurricane Ophelia, but it was more important for the unity of the group and the experience of it all. Plus, I personally felt in my heart of hearts we were going to be okay.

We had very high winds and Ophelia ended up staying out to sea, thankfully.

I trusted all was going to be okay, what with the unity of all of us being together. It was the energy.

We were not at all alarmed or terrified. Rather, we were very adventurous with it and kept the faith.

The house we were in was beautiful. We’d walk down the beach. It was rather amazing: 50 to 60 mile an hour wind. Just a lot of wind, but no rain.

And then, after the storm had passed, we continued our daily ritual of walking up and down the beach in the morning with this sunrise. At least four of the eight of us would take our walks at any given time.

So one morning we were on our walk down on the part of the beach which juts out… jetties out into the water. And we noticed the sand had differentiated itself from what it had been before the peak winds of the storm. And there was this particular huge sand mound that stuck out.

“Ophelia,” the Loggerhead Turtle

And as we were walking out there, we spotted a loggerhead turtle that had apparently been stranded because the loggerhead turtles come in at night and hatch their eggs. Only the females touch land to lay their eggs. The males once they’re born and go to sea never return to land. We learned this while we were there.

And we also learned every single morning there are well over 200 people that specifically walk the beaches looking for loggerhead turtles that may have gotten stranded because of a tide going out. Sometimes they get caught in the sand.

So we didn’t know all that much about the loggerheads until afterward.

So we found this one loggerhead, which was stranded, and it was just huge. I wanted to get the four of us to each pick it up and put it back in the water. And I looked at the turtle’s eyes, and I named her “Ophelia” because Ophelia is what brought her to us and us to her.

I looked into her eyes, and everybody was saying, “No, no… She’ll bite us, you know, don’t!”

But I looked into her eyes, and I just knew she wouldn’t bite. She was asking for help, after all. It was a “help me” look.

I knew this intuitively. I knew there was a connection there. And so, reluctantly, I couldn’t and they wouldn’t lift her.

She was pretty darn heavy. I’d say maybe 70 pounds or more. I mean, I’m probably about 250 pounds or so. Loggerheads are huge; you can literally sit on them and ride them.

We ended up temporarily leaving the turtle and returning to the house to get more help. We didn’t want to hurt her. We didn’t want to risk injuring her or anything.

We contacted NRD (the Natural Resources Department), so they could come and get her.

Then all eight of us ended up going back to meet them. It was difficult for us to leave her alone, but then everyone got to take part in her rescue. The plan was to get her out to sea again.

NRD met us there. We all grabbed the sides of her shell and lifted up so the turtle could move her feet to walk. So it’s not like we actually lifted her to carry her out to the water. Instead, we would take the weight off of her so she could move her legs and get up and out to sea.

Ophelia seemed excited by all the attention she was getting. It was as if we would look her in the eyes, and she would look back at us saying with her eyes, “Help me. Please help me!”

And I swear you could almost see her smile at you. And the closer we would get her to the water, the harder she would try. Every time we’d lift her up, the more her little feet would go, and you could tell she was getting more excited.

And then just before we got her all the way into the water to the release point, DNR checked Ophelia’s nostrils for barnacles that might be growing around her nostrils. The all-clear was given, and we released Ophelia into the sea, where she promptly dove beneath the surface and disappeared.

The DNR people said, “Oh my god, do you know we’ve got hundreds of people who walk the beaches every day, and they’ve never yet even once seen a loggerhead turtle, never!”

For 26 years, no one had seen a loggerhead turtle along that part of the coastline of South Carolina.

It was so amazing rescuing Ophelia. I felt like I connected with the world. So like the whole trip was meant for us to go there and save that turtle.

I do not think Ophelia ever looked back. I don’t know.

Swimming with Dolphins

Anna Maria Island, Florida

1979

I’ve swum with dolphins. It was 1979 along the west coast of Florida. I lived on an island. And I had some friends that had a sailboat. We’d go out from time to time into the Gulf of Mexico.

Once, suddenly, everybody says “Look!”

Next thing everybody’s jumping off the sailboat and somebody grabs my wrist and pulls me in as well, and I’m suddenly flying through the air looking down at the water. I’m about ready to submerge into the water among what I first thought were sharks. But thankfully they were dolphins.

And I grabbed ahold of the fin of one of the dolphins. I had no idea what I was doing, and so I got nervous. And lo-and-behold, I managed to clasp my hands underneath the dolphin’s belly, which now suddenly decides to dive down, down deep into the water.

And I’m going like, Okay, I hope it knows I can’t breathe real long under here.

And I guess I must have tightened my grip a bit, and so then it turned, and I’m squinting, trying to make sure I’m going the right direction because I can now see light diminish going through the water. After all, it was first dark but now getting lighter.

I am thinking, Oh my gosh!

I didn’t realize what was going to happen as we surfaced because we are going at a very good clip. It was unbelievable.

We are going faster and faster and up, and then as soon as we break through the surface of the water, I go flying it seems about 25 feet directly up into the air as if I’ve just been shot out of a cannon. And then the dolphin just goes down, resurfaces, and comes back to me and returns me to the boat.

Yes. They say dolphins are connected to you, similar to the stories you hear in the TV series, Flipper. Oh, my goodness. I know it to be true, firsthand.

I always look in all the animals’ eyes. That’s how I speak to them.

Michael: How did the dolphin let you know that it’s taking you back to the boat?

I didn’t know. It just came back and nudged under me. Yeah. And so then I just grabbed the fin, and it just took me right back to the boat where I was safe because in the water we had some fairly rough seas.

In the Gulf of Mexico, it doesn’t get all that rough. But we had about five-foot waves, which is fairly intense for the Gulf, especially in the summer.

Michael: Did any of your group have any other similar experiences?

No, no one did. No one had it as I’d had it. They just held on to the fins and just surfed along the surface.

But for me it was like, I wanted to experience what it was like to be a dolphin in my mind, in my heart of hearts, if you will. And I think that’s why my dolphin took me for a ride.

Michael: Well, let me ask you this: do you think the dolphin was telepathically reading your mind?

Oh, there’s definitely something to that. Absolutely. I’d say, yeah, for sure.

Michael: Okay, now let’s just suppose these dolphins were totally wild and never experienced human beings before. And suddenly, all these people jump in the water and they’re grabbing hold of them. Do you think some of those animals might have been spooked by humans?

They could have been, but I, I think they could feel we weren’t going to harm them, and we’re playful creatures, after all, like they are. We were just visiting their world and experiencing the sea along with them.

We were just a part of it. It was like how we’re all a part of the one universe. And so it was all very harmonious, and it was so exciting. I mean, that was now many years ago, and I’m now like reliving it. It was just a totally wonderful experience. Yeah.

Michael: You can’t always treat wild animals like that, you know. I wouldn’t with a hippo or a crocodile or a tiger. I have collected some wild animal stories that didn’t all end up so well for the people involved.

Look for more of my fantastic animal stories in Medium about humans interacting with wild animals.