Lanai Music Appreciation Team

It was Christmastime on Maui, Hawaii; starfish had become tree-toppers, Santa Clauses were everywhere, yet dressed in aloha shirts, shorts, and flip-flops, enjoying a nice tropical vacation before the long Christmas Eve journey delivering toys around the world.

I was enjoying a pre-holiday vacation myself, admiring the way that Christmas is observed from the Hawaiian perspective, decorations interpreted in a seaside theme, with sand instead of snow as the backdrop. Even so, the "aloha-liday" spirit was there, each ohana anticipating their own family traditions of celebrating the most magical time of year.

One of my own traditions while visiting Lanai has always been to venture on a snorkeling adventure from Lahaina over to Lanai, a trip with Trilogy Excursions by catamaran early in the morning, featuring a fruit and cinnamon roll breakfast, later an amazing grilled chicken lunch, and even chocolate sundaes while sailing on the way back in the afternoon. The main feature, though, is a peaceful morning spent snorkeling with Lanai's marine life in a sheltered cove, where tropical marine wildlife poses for underwater photographs while going about their fishy business.

On this trip I had an old film-based underwater camera, and when I came out of the water after going through my first roll of film, one of the tour guides mentioned that a pod of spinner dolphins had arrived and were milling around on the far side of the cove. He said to listen when I went back into the water, and I should be able to hear their squeaks and whistles, even from across the cove. I put a new roll of film in the camera, reentered the water, and sure enough, could hear the sounds of a dolphin yakfest going on. A thought suddenly came to me; if I could hear them, I wondered if they could hear me as well? So, and given the season, the song that first occurred was "Jingle Bells," and, with my mask and snorkel in place, I began to sing underwater as well as was possible under the circumstances.

Not 30 seconds later, here they came... a group of about ten dolphins were swimming fast straight toward me, the first in line with his/her head tilted to one side, as if to say, "What is making that god-awful noise?!" If I could have gasped without drowning, I would have done so, but was still amazed and thrilled and in a state of complete animal-encounter joy. I somehow had the presence of mind to actually put the camera into operation, and took as many photos as I could in the five minutes or so that they swam in groups of two or three around me, each with a quizzical look in my direction, eyeing me without any evidence of fear or aggression.

Once their curiosity was satisfied, they swam away as quickly and suddenly as they had arrived, and I was left in awe of the experience. I'd participated in a number of dolphin encounters before, in research centers or other facilities where you can "meet" them and help to train them or feed them or have them give you "foot-pushes" or even kiss you, but those are with dolphins who are trained to interact with humans.

This was different, however; this was an unprogrammed, spontaneous interaction that demonstrated another animal's intelligence, curiosity, desire to experience and understand and essentially do research, much as we do with them in those other encounter environments. I was only a few feet away from "alien" beings, yet they exhibited similar thought processes and behavior as humans do when studying other such beings, and to be the subject of their research was an experience I will treasure always.

Next time I'll sing "Under the Sea" from "The Little Mermaid," maybe they'll stay even longer.