Because the natural environment in this part of Japan is fitted, for the dolphins to live in, where the local people, showed respect toward these animals, that is, why they’re, flourishing over there! Translated…
The icy cold water temperature of twenty-degrees, it’d made people shiver, but, as long as we started kicking our divers’ flappers, turned around, toward that pod of bottlenose dolphins, don’t know if it’s the swimming that’s made our bodies warmed, or the excitement taking over, it’d, immediately, chased the freezing feeling of being underwater away, we’re only, focusing on the times that the dolphins approached us, their, every single move.
Mikura-jima, 200 kilometers, south of Tokyo, an island, severed off, from the rest of the world. From the ancient times, there were, human residents on the island, and these pods of dolphins, kept showing up in the various records of the eras. The activities of swimming with the dolphins locally, started back in the early nineties, the islanders, in order to know the effects of them swimming with the dolphins, they’d set up a database of identification for the dolphins one by one, they’d already, tagged over 250 dolphins locally, and, understood more of these dolphins’ stories.
The number of dolphins around Mukura-jima is between 120 to 130, this means, that the oceans surrounding the locale, can only be fitted, to have this many dolphins live in the region at a time. Of these, about 30, had stayed around the island for long, allowing people to set up the genealogies for them. And, the newborns here this year, are about ten pups, then, about two of these ten, would disappear. These dolphins may have migrated elsewhere, and lived for long where they’d, migrated to, or maybe, returned, to their place of birth many years later.
Because it’s located right in the middle of the oceans, without the mountain ranges, the island’s weather is, quite unpredictable. Several times I’d visited, I’d had half of the times, which I was successfully able to, finish my trips, and the other half, I’d, moved myself off the island, before the weather conditions became, too, adverse.
And the island life of “Jumping Dolphins” naturally depended on the weather. When the weather’s fine, the wind not too strong, the lighting right; when the weather worsens, we naturally couldn’t go out to sea; the hardest for us to handle, are between these, but the waves hit the ships hard, not only would we all get wet, we’d still had to, watch out, to NOT injure ourselves.
the photo the writer captured, of this newborn infant dolphin with its mother, from UDN.com…
As people go there, it would be ordinary, to bump into this sort of a situation, and, “such a bad weather condition” naturally surfaced in all of us, and all we could do, is to, smile bitterly at one another. And yet, all of these trials, so long as we get the dolphins to come to check us out, out of curiosity, or seeing two, three of them in play, or see the mothers, with their newborn pups, it’d be, more than worth it.
No matter which ocean you’d dove in, if you can see the new births, it’s, such, a gleeful thing!
This just showed, how important conservation is, and, when we’re, in the midst of nature, we must, show nature the grandest kind of respect, because humans can’t control nature, and, when we don’t show enough respect toward nature, then, nature have a tendency, to show us, that we need to, respect it, and besides, all the critters of the world only thrive, in the most unpolluted, most fitting environment, for them to thrive in, like these dolphins!
Life, the Obstacle Course 