Zanzibar: Marine mammal harassment and a good ending

Me, at the beginning of the trip, thinking this was going to be fun.

One of the popular tourist attractions in Zanzibar is doing a dolphin tour. I am generally not a dolphin tour kind of person. They seem clichéd and involve the public wearing of bathing suits, deep ocean waters, and harassing wildlife… all things I generally try to avoid. However, I succumbed to curiosity and to the lure of the Indian ocean… 

Our boat "Jumbo" and our captain.

After handing over my $15 US (including lunch) I was picked up and, driven the hour and a half to the beach and taken out in a boat. Now, I don’t know what I expected… I must have thought that friendly sea creatures and I would frolic in the warm waves together-  that the dolphins would be delighted to have such curious and fun-loving human companions sharing their water space and that we would spend an idyllic morning full of giggling and inter-species bonding. Silly me.

This is about all we ever saw of the dolphins

The chase is on!

In fact, there were ELEVEN boats on the water, each filled to capacity with Mzungus (white tourists). The captain, upon seeing a dolphin break the surface of the water, would gun the boat engine and race to the spot where he thought the pod might next appear. Not wanting to miss out on the action, and possibly the tips, the other boats would follow closely behind. This created a sort of marine-based fox-hunt. The steps of which go something like this:

Mzungus on a boat

• Dolphin sighting
• Frentic yelling
• Engine gunning
• Boat racing
• Crew yelling at mzungus, “JUMP! JUMP NOW! GO! GO! GO!”
• Pale bodies in flippers and snorkelling masks hurling themselves overboard
• Big splashes
• Lots of looking under, over and around saying, “Where? Did you seem them? I think I saw them… wait, is that a jelly fish”
• Swimming back to the boat and flopping back into it.
• Start the cycle over.

At one point, for about 30 seconds, I did manage to see 6 dolphins swimming 20 feet underneath me. It was very cool sight. They are amazing animals.

That being said, I wish I had gone with my initial gut instinct and not done the tour. I’m certain that if these dolphins had a voice, they would request an immediate end to all dolphin tours. Far from playing peacefully with them-- holding hands to flippers and singing, “Under the Sea”—these dolphins just looked harassed. It cannot be nice to start each day being chased by loud boats and screaming tourists.

____________________________________________________________________________

There was a second half of the tour. We stopped on the way back and snorkelled. Wow.

I am officially in love with snorkelling. What a sight! I don’t think I can really describe what I saw or how it felt, but I can show you this photo, taken just as I came back into the boat. I think that the expression of glee on my face says it all.

An attempt at taking an artistic photo of this fishing boat.

Yet another attempt at being "artsy" this was at the beach again.