Dolphins near Polihale Beach

By far, the best part of our Kauai trip was the Na Pali coastline tour. The best part of that tour was swimming with dolphins. I was not expecting to see many, but in the early morning hours in this shadowed protected cove, they were peacefully swimming all around our boat. It was truly a surreal experience.

I was amazed how near we were to such beautiful animals. They are beautiful in the way they swim in the the ocean so effortlessly; their movements were perfectly synchornized with eachother.

In these tight pods, dolphins will surround others that are hurt, pregnant, or newly born. We saw a baby dolphin that was so small-- a body that was just about 3ft long, and a dorsal fin still curled over. I didn't get a picture of the baby, cause we saw it just for a split second before others came up around him.

In February, Seth and I went to a speaking engagement up in Park City to promote awareness of toxic mercury concentrations in our ocean's waters. Mercury is an element that is a by-product of many extraction and manufacturing process (mainly burning coal to generate electricity. It is an element that doesn't disappear; it is absorbed by fish in the ocean. Since dolphins are at the top of the food chain, their meat contains incredibly toxic levels of mercury. We heard directorLouie Psihoyos speak about his award-winning documentary The Cove.

The Cove is about a horrific dolphin slaughter occurring in a quaint fishing village in Japan. These whalers argue it is about culture of tradition, while the mayor secretly sells the dolphin meat to elementary schools for lunches with toxic levels of mercury. The film is done very well, in a way that is informative, exciting and outraging at the same time.


During our dolphin swim, the ideas presented in The Cove were are the forefront of my mind. We actually were able to put on snorkel masks and fins, dive in the water and swim with the dolphins. The most amazing part was hearing their sonar-- it was truly amazing to hear them communicate with one another.

In fact, our Tour guides Chris, from Na Pali Riders urged everyone on the boat to go rent The Cove from Net Flix so we could be aware and involved in the cause. Seth and I were the only ones on the boat who had seen the film.

I have a video of some of what we saw; I will try to post later. (seeing as I can't even get my html links to work correctly, I'm not sure how that will turn out!

This last photo is my favorite. By far.