The great dolphin chase

The mosque woke us up at 4.30 and we were not impressed (the north of Bali has the highest concentration of Muslims on the island). This meant we were already awake when our alarm went off at 5.30 to get us up for our dolphin watching trip.

The boats were waiting on the shore and we queued up with mainly Dutch and Spanish holiday makers to board one. The boats don’t look particularly sea-worthy. They look like insects with a long skinny body and legs. No one bothers with the minor formality of life jackets and you just get in and sit in a line behind the driver and motor out to sea.

The sun was just coming up and displaying some wonderful colours in the sky. The sea was calm and I had fun for a while taking photographs and enjoying the views of the mountains gradually appearing. I had almost forgotten why we were out there, when someone shouted “delfín!”. Three dolphins jumped out of the golden water just ahead of us. We weren’t the only ones to spot them. About 20 little boats changed course and headed towards the sighting. If they had been still there, we would have had them surrounded. It felt like we were on a dolphin hunting trip rather than a dolphin watching trip! We actually didn’t see any more for an hour and when we did it was the same performance; all the boats headed right towards them motors on full throttle. It seems such a short-sighted approach. Many tourists come to Lovina just to see the dolphins and many local families rely on the income that provides. Why oh why then do they mess it up and chase the dolphins away? Apparently, not so long ago, you could see dolphins from the shore every morning, but now you have to go further and further out to try to spot them. It was Monkey Disco* all over again.















*Monkey Disco is one of our favourite (boring?) travel stories. Years ago on our first trip to Sri Lanka, we did a safari in Yala national park. Our driver/guide tried to make sure we got a good show and seemed disappointed when the animals weren’t doing anything entertaining. For example, we came across a huge number of pink flamingos near a lake at dusk. We were happy to observe this beautiful spectacle from a distance, but the driver wanted to drive right into them so that we could see them fly. Fortunately, we talked him out of it. Whenever we came across some monkeys quietly hanging out in a tree, the cretinous driver would rev his engine to scare and irritate the poor things. He’d look very pleased with the result, give us the thumbs up and yell “monkey disco” as the monkeys jumped and danced around in annoyance. A very extreme example of guides messing with the balance of nature in order to entertain the tourists and being too thick to realize that they may be harming the very thing that brings the tourists there in the first place. The sad thing about the Sri Lanka case was that there was a park ranger in the car at the time who did nothing.