Swimming with wild dolphins means you meet them on their turf, your experience totally dependent on their choice of how, when, and how long they will have an intimate experience with you. What is so wondrous about wild dolphin swims is that they actually do come to swim with people – they make a clear and conscious choice to be with them. I have been out on a boat with a group, anchored, minding our own business, and then looked up to see dolphins swimming straight for the boat like greyhounds, then hanging around the boat until we got in to swim with them. That takes a lot of consciousness. 

There is a very clear wild dolphin swim protocol for participants which does not allow touching, feeding, or any kind of aggressive swimming or boating around them. I have never seen or heard of one incidence of aggressive behavior from dolphins on a wild swim. In fact, they go out of their way to not touch you.

Although many wild dolphin encounters entail week long journeys on a live aboard boat, there are plenty of opportunities to do half day, land based trips out to the dolphins. You can do half day trips to several bottlenose pods off of Key West for example, and can swim with the spotted dolphins in Bimini on either half day or weeklong swims.

Captive facilities range from research facilities who sponsor Dolphin-Assisted Therapy programs and public dolphin swims, to resorts who offer dolphin swims as a sideline, to theme parks like Seaworld, Disney World, etc. What is curious is that most captive dolphins are bottlenose dolphins who, in the wild, are typically very shy and wary of humans. The conditions in which the dolphins live vary from saltwater lagoons with nets blocking their exit, to concrete tanks with no “live” water or sea life in them.  How the dolphins are treated within these facilities varies as well, but all captive dolphins are trained to perform stunts, and to interact with humans. That very point makes a huge difference in the kind of interaction one will have with a captive dolphin compared to a wild one who is free to make it’s own choices.

As with all creatures forced to live outside their natural environment, captive dolphins do not live in accordance with their own natural rhythms. They cannot range as far and deep as they normally would or catch their own fish, they cannot mate according to their natural rhythms, or live within a pod social structure, and  are required to interact with humans, up close and personal, on a regular basis. This leads to the issue of aggressive behavior in dolphins. Dolphin trainers warn swim participants to behave in a certain way should the dolphins show any signs of getting "pushy”. Pregnant women are not allowed to swim with captive dolphins because the dolphins have been known to get very excited about the new life-force energies in the mother and get more physical than the woman might be comfortable with. Some people have in fact been crowded, bumped, or pushed by captive dolphins.

My take on the issue of dolphin aggression is this: If you squeeze a very highly aware and conscious being, with holographic awareness, and sonar frequencies that can theoretically alter cell structure, into a tight energetic and spatial structure you will have aberrations in the behavior of those beings.  Whether those dolphin beings have “chosen” to be in captivity as part of their karma or dharma as some people believe, makes no difference. They have to deal with confinement that would create stress on anyone, causing them to be testy and off center with their reactions and responses at times.

It is true that many people have amazing, life changing experiences with captive dolphins, their essence after all isn’t changed in that environment. I support Dolphin Assisted Therapy, in fact, as I have seen the extraordinary healing that disabled children have experienced with captive dolphins.  I wonder though, if a person is strong and healthy might they not have a responsibility to meet these beings on equal terms, where both human and dolphin have free will to decide in any given moment how much intimacy they are willing to give and receive. This, then, would be a win-win situation for all involved, one that reflects “spirit of change” thinking. 

This is an important issue to reflect deeply on – what will you support with your time, energy, and money when considering a dolphin encounter?

Another dolphin swim dynamic to consider is the choice of facilitator. Facilitators range from people who consider their work with dolphins a “calling” and for whom it is a primary focus, to those who are healers or therapists of some kind who desire to take people on a dolphin journey as an adjunct experience. There are more and more of those kinds of facilitators, as it’s much easier now to find dolphin swim boats to charter without needing to know anything about dolphins.

Facilitators who have been “called” to this work have usually quite literally been called by the dolphins.  They most likely have some combination of life changing dolphin experiences and synchronistic events that led them to it, and so have a deep understanding of the true dolphin spirit.

As with any travel operator, facilitators need to make their trips look good to get people to join them.  In truth, we have spaces to fill and boat charters to pay for in addition to our love of these journeys. Do your homework, investigate seriously who you choose to go with, as these are very powerful experiences. Ask the boat operators about different facilitators, they know them the best. If any facilitator is consistently inappropriate in either the way they do business, or in their interactions with the dolphins, the boat operators will not recommend them.

Consider what kind of boat you will be on as well.  Is it a monohull which rocks more in rough weather, or a cat or trimaran which is stabilized by pontoons? Also consider whether it is a power boat that “powers” into the dolphin waters, or whether it is a sailing or gently powered vessel that eases into dolphin territory. How many people the boat takes is also important. There is a big difference in swimming with a group of dolphins with 8 other people compared to 20. There is protocol that should be honored in how the boat and crew interact with the dolphin pods. They should show awareness and respect for times of dolphin feeding, resting, or playtime and not put people in the water when those activities are happening.

Other interesting factoids:

·         It is illegal to swim with dolphins in the U.S. due to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which requires boats and people to stay within a certain distance from dolphins and whales. This is pretty strictly enforced in Hawaii where it’s swim at your own risk. Boat operators in the Keys work more in concert with authorities to let swims happen, but with state and federal awareness. The Bahamas have no such restrictions.

·         The research group Aquathought has found that 80% of people who swim with dolphins have a change in brain wave patterns from beta to theta states of consciousness. This explains why many participants experience states of bliss, ecstasy, deep peace, and a sense of well being.

·         Dolphin brains are always synchronized between left and right hemispheres. Human brains are not – but are found to become synchronized after swimming with dolphins. This phenomena has been known to support altered states of consciousness, and even out of body experiences.

·         Dolphin sonar is 4 times more powerful than the ultrasound used in medical diagnostics.  It is sometimes used to stun fish when feeding, and is thought to be able to alter cell structure.

·         It is believed that dolphins “see” holographically and so experience themselves as part of a whole, instead of the individuated identity that we have. That means they also see us in our wholeness.

With all these dynamics of mind, body, emotions, and spirit being potentially altered into states of expansion, it is easy to see why dolphin swims are life changing. If you factor in the effects of the ocean, sun, moon, other group members, and the fact that many intimate dolphin interactions happen in high energy places on the planet, you have a very potent  brew in which to be immersed. Dolphin swims are not vacations. The more consciousness you bring to your choice of where and how to swim with dolphins the more empowered all of us involved in the dolphin-human dynamic will be – especially the dolphins.

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Katryn Lavanture facilitates wild dolphin swims, and lectures on the dolphin-human connection as the Director of Spirit of the Dolphin Journeys. She can be contacted at 215-848-1666 or dolfun@dolphin-spirit.com, or visit her website: www.dolphin-spirit.com.

Dolphin Video: Katryn has created a video of the spotted dolphins she swims with in the Bahamas. It includes underwater footage plus beautiful music created exclusively for this video by Michael Hammer. This video evokes feelings of deep peace, relaxation, and well being (similar to the benefits you attain when actually swimming with dolphins). This incredible video was created for use individually or in groups to set a mood, de-stress, and calm emotions. Highly recommended, read more about this video on her website by clicking here.

Katryn Lavanture tells us more about herself and her wonderful work:

Like many of us doing this work, I came to it through an unexpected life changing experience with dolphins. In truth I never saw it coming, and didn't know it was happening even while I was in the thick of it. I didn't get the magnitude of what was happening until I returned from my first dolphin swim and started having bizarre and amazing experiences. See the above article.

These experiences were essentially my training in becoming adept at sensing and working with the dolphin presence beyond the three dimensional form they embody. If I hadn't had 10 years an an energetic healer to help me become familiar with working in states of expanded consciousness I would have thought I was losing my mind. Even at that, sometimes I thought I was going a little crazy.

As I followed this new path laid before me by the dolphins, there was one underlying message I kept hearing, and that was "Bring people to us". Initially I was unsure what that meant. I wasn't interested in doing dolphin swims all summer, so I wasn't clear what was being asked of me. In time, however, I came to see that I was being asked to serve as a bridge between the dolphin and human worlds, sort of an ambassador to the Cetacean Nation.