“Come,” urged her grandmother, walking up to her and putting an arm around her shoulders, “it’s getting cold now. Look at you! You’re covered in goose bumps. Let’s go in for some coffee and koeksisters.”
Out in the bay, a dolphin breached the indigo waves, gave a flick of its tail, and dived deep again.
Author’s Note
A few years ago, I went to Monkey Mia in Shark’s Bay, Western Australia, where I’d heard it was possible to swim with wild dolphins. On arrival, I found that it wasn’t quite so simple. There was no actual swimming involved, just standing knee-deep in the sea stroking the dolphins, or taking turns, with other tourists, to feed them.
Of course, that was amazing enough. The thing that really struck me was the dolphins’ eyes. They’d lie on their sides gazing up, and when I stared back it was like looking into eyes as innocent as those of a newborn baby and, simultaneously, those of the wisest creature on earth. Their gaze was all-knowing. It seemed to me that the dolphins understood more than we ever could. Their skin was remarkable too! I had expected it to be cold and slightly slimy. Instead, it was silky-smooth and beautiful to touch, and I could feel their muscles rippling underneath.
This made me want to swim with them more desperately than ever. I pleaded with the owners of the resort and even the research scientists to make my dream come true, but they insisted it wasn’t possible. One evening I was sitting alone on the beach watching the sunset turn the water to molten gold when a fishing boat came in, followed by a mother dolphin, known at Monkey Mia as Nicky, and her calf. Well, I didn’t hesitate. I dived into the sea in my shorts and T-shirt and swum out a little distance from them. Nicky had a reputation for being greedy and was preoccupied with waiting for stray fish from the fishing boat, but I noticed her calf watching me inquisitively.
After a couple of minutes, he started to swim in my direction. The water is very buoyant in that part of Australia, so I lay on my stomach and stretched my arms out and, slowly and very shyly, he moved closer. Eventually we were only a couple of inches apart. That moment, lying in the red-gold sea, gazing into the wise-innocent eyes of a baby dolphin, was unforgettable. I borrowed from it for the scene in Dolphin Song where Martine first swims with Little Storm.
My fascination with dolphins didn’t end with my visit to Monkey Mia. I was always trying to find an opportunity to get close to them again, and whenever I read about dolphin and whale strandings, most of which seem to end in tragedy, it broke my heart. As the number of animals involved in these strandings increased, I started to wonder what caused it, what the common denominator might be.
Then I heard that the testing of low-frequency active sonar had been directly linked to the deaths of whales in the Bahamas. Since that day, the weight of evidence gathered by marine scientists and conservationists proving—beyond doubt in many cases—that active sonar is linked to the strandings of whales (particularly species such as beaked whales), has continued to mount. Forced to surface too quickly, the whales die of a condition similar to the bends in humans and are frequently found with bleeding brains and ears. Dolphin experts are divided over whether the increased use of sonar is directly responsible for the rise in beachings of dolphins, or whether activity such as naval exercises in the area causes them so much stress and fear that they literally try to flee the ocean. Either way the outcome is the same.
Reading about the impact of sonar testing on marine mammals gave me the idea for Dolphin Song. I knew I wanted it to be about a school trip that goes disastrously wrong, and when my mum, who lives in South Africa’s Western Cape, close to Martine’s fictional home, Sawubona, started sending me regular reports on the miracle of nature that is the Sardine Run, that provided a perfect reason for a school adventure. All I needed was a location. I wanted to find a remote African island that was still home to wild dolphins. I’d heard that Mozambique’s Bazaruto Archipelago was such a place, and I decided to go see it for myself.
There are five main islands in the Bazaruto Archipelago, so I hope the Mozambicans won’t mind that I’ve taken the liberty of adding a sixth, Dugong, for the purposes of my story. However, the other islands mentioned—Benguerra, Bazaruto, Death Island, and Santa Carolina, with its eerie abandoned hotel, which I explored—all exist. They are a true African paradise. The sand is so clean that it squeaks when you walk, the water is aquamarine, and the islanders are extremely proud that their islands are friendly and free of crime.
The islands also happen to be home to several, hundred-strong pods of dolphins. Late one afternoon a boatman took me out in a rubber dinghy to look for them. We found them close to the reef hunting shoals of little fish. The sight of their lithe, graceful bodies glinting in the clear water as they darted like quicksilver all around us, surfacing periodically, to take a puff of oxygen, was beyond beautiful. This time I felt no urge to swim with them. I was content to watch dolphins at play in their natural environment; dolphins left alone to be free. I prayed that sonar testing would never find its way to the Bazaruto Islands as it does in Dolphin Song.
Writing this book and being able to spend months immersed in a world of dolphins was one of the best experiences of my life. In Dolphin Song, Martine’s gift allows her and her friends to help twenty-one beached dolphins and return all but one to the sea. In real life, dolphins and whales rely on marine welfare organizations and ordinary people like you and me to take an interest in them and try to protect them.
We only have one planet. Let’s do our best to care for it.
Lauren St. John
London 2007
Lauren St. John, Dolphin Song
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