As the “cat” picked up knots along Dalkey Sound, he appeared, as expected, just ahead – first to one side of us, then the other – keeping perfect station and breathing noisily each time he appeared on the surface. We could clearly see his big grey form under the boat as he criss-crossed under us. When we dropped anchor 100‘ offshore near White Rock in Killiney Bay, he was still with us but some distance away, rolling lazily into view every so often. Mick, Shane and I dropped into the water, leaving Kathleen on board, and made our way to the bottom at 30’ in poor visibility. We were in search of lobsters but did not have any luck.
About 10 minutes later our big friend showed up suddenly in the gloom and started circling around us at about 10’ from us. There was much clanking of cylinders as we put our backs together in the traditional defence reflex, but it was immediately obvious that he was “just plain curious”, no doubt having been attracted by the sound of the regulators. He was about 10’ long with a horizontal tail (like a whale), and he had a long bottle-shaped nose with a most curious fixed smile and his small puzzled eye seemed to find us very unusual specimens indeed. He had the prominent triangular “sail” or dorsal fin of a shark, and his upper body was grey or light brown, the lower half pale white, and there were numerous scratches and scrapes along his sides and back.
He kept in view for about 10 minutes and we eventually tried to touch him or follow him, but he was not alarmed. Regretfully we had to surface and return to the cat, but he followed us all the way and escorted our cat back to Dalkey Sound, showing off with one magnificent leap, rising several feet above the surface and splashing mightily back.
When we returned to base, we consulted Sir Hardy’s “The Open Sea” and although we were hoping it was a porpoise (as he is our Club crest) we were not surprised to find that he was either Delphinus delphis – the common dolphin or else Tursiops truncates - the bottle-nosed Dolphin. Judging from his length and shape of nose, we decided he was more likely of the latter species. Sir Hardy says that “the bottle-nosed dolphin –Tursiops truncates, comes next in abundance to the common dolphin and is somewhat larger, up to twelve feet: its beak is much shorter and its body rather more robust. It is widely distributed in the North Atlantic. Its food consists mainly of fish, mackerel, herring and pilchards and also squid”.
On the following Saturday, we took to Dalkey Sound again, this time armed with a dozen herrings in a net bag and Mick brought his cine camera with a high-speed black and white film, with the intention (or hope really) of filming the other two attempting to interest our dolphin in some (dead) herring. It was all rather chancy, but as it happened we did not pick him up at all despite our best efforts, and we ended up diving outside the Muglins, reaching seventy five feet in very mucky water. Let us hope he will return next summer - what a pet to have!!
Johnny King (with the help of Mick Moriarty!)
Diving News Summer 1963
