Swim
With Dolphins In Australia Experience
Colin
Svanberg went on a swim with dolphins in Australia tour at Rockingham,
Perth in December 2006 and I called him to find out how it went.
There's a
fellow by the name of Terry Howson of Rockingham Wild
Encounters and
he takes people out on a boat and then he has a little things that
drags you through the water that you just hold on to, in rows of about
6.
He has
trained the wild bottlenose dolphins to come up to his boat without
feeding them or anything, so he's the only person that does that.
Not too
bad. From Rockingham, where you leave from, Terry goes out in his boat
and he basically knows where they're going to be. If the wind is
blowing from a particular direction, he'll know they're "up this other
end"…
They seem
to know the motor of his boat so they'll splash around in the wake of
his boat but they won't splash around the wake of anyone else's boat.
More
swim with dolphins
travel reports and reviews.
On this
swim with dolphins in Australia tour we went in a few times. Terry
would spot the dolphins and you'd have to get into the water very
quietly otherwise you scare them away, you might be lucky to spend
about 10 minutes in each spot and then he would go off and find another
group. So altogether we might have spent - about 2 hours.
It's
fairly expensive, over a $100 I think, and you spend - in the water - a
total of half an hour or something like that.
The water was fairly murky. I took some underwater shots but they
didn't come out very well because the visibility was only about 2
metres (6.5 ft) and they were about 3 metres (9.8 ft) away.
Did you
take your own diving gear?
Terry provides you with a wetsuit, snorkel,
goggles and a belt that goes around your wetsuit and then you hold on
to each other's belts as you go around. So you're getting towed by
these little propeller machines.
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Didn't get
seasick no. It's sort of protected in this area near Rockingham, along
the island called Garden Island, so that provides a very sheltered bay
which means the weather is a lot milder.
Here's
how to prevent sea sickness on a
swim with dolphins in Australia trip.
Well, it's
a very good experience if you've never actually been in the water with
dolphins. These guys are very friendly and the people on the boat -
there might be about 4 staff members - they will drag a couple of lines
of people along.
Another
couple of people will go down with these machines and actually do flips
and things under the water and that actually makes the dolphins do the
same sort of flips; they actually mimic these guys that roll around
under water and it's a really good experience. You don't get to touch
the dolphins but you get very close to them.
They don't
harass them, they don't feed them or try and scare them or anything
like that.
This guy knows them, he knows their babies. The mums will bring their
babies to show them off to the people and that sort of thing.
Rockingham
Wild Encounters are under the control of the wildlife people in Perth,
so they know they can't do anything wrong or their swim with dolphins
in Australia business will be shut down. Terry's been doing it for 5
years now.
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On the
tour you're with all these other people, and if you like the company of
all these other people, that's good… to me I'd really prefer
it by myself. But if you prefer to use a swim with dolphins in
Australia company, I'd say about 7 out of 10.
The
top five wild dolphin swim
destinations in the world.
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