We entered then, a world I had seen but never known, the deep ocean, almost a universe of its own. We immediately encountered a school of bottlenose dolphins. They were surfing. As the larger swells bore down onto the shore, they would accelerate into their advance, twenty or more at a time, and then glide as the face of the wave became steeper and steeper. It was a synchronized dance, effortless in its grace. As the waves broke into a thunder of white, they would explode from its back. Their speed launched them high into the air, like a salvo of rockets fired from the blue-green opaqueness of the sea.

‘Dolphins,’ Steve called. I turned to him, confused. We were already watching dolphins. He was looking away from the coast and out to sea. I followed his gaze and felt the hairs prickle on my arms and the back of my neck. The distant horizon had become a seething cauldron, the ocean churned to a froth by a pod of dolphins so vast I could not make out its beginning or end. We turned from the shore and headed into the deep blue, running almost full throttle to finally overtake them.

They were common dolphins, an uninspiring name for so singularly beautiful a creature. A super pod of thousands of individuals. Any bait ball in their way would have stood like a tricycle in the path of a freight train. Steve sped ahead and dropped Beverly and I in the water.

I waited apprehensively, glad I was bigger than bait size.

Never had I been approached so closely by wild creatures, nor by so many, but in less than five minutes they were gone. Steve laughed with delight at the excitement that shone in our eyes as we climbed back in the boat. We sped around the pod and repeated the process.