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Swimming with dolphins can be an unforgettable experience that’s both magical and emotionally enriching, yet it’s essential to keep some things in mind before venturing out into the water.
Dolphins are wild animals at heart; give them plenty of room to swim around you to reduce any chances of them feeling threatened and running away from you. This will keep them feeling secure rather than fleeing away from you in fear, so you could actually go swimming with dolphins.
Don’t Panic
Swimming with dolphins can be an unforgettable experience for many. It is one of the highlights of our resilience retreats and often provokes powerful emotional responses.
Yet dolphin encounters available as tourist activities can cause real harm to wild dolphins. This is because these encounters force dolphins into performing behaviors that are unnatural for them and make them act like puppets.
Don’t Rush
Dolphins are wild animals that should be allowed to approach you at their own pace. Engaging in aggressive behavior will only cause them to flee further and ruin the experience for all involved.
Dolphins in their natural environments enjoy exploring an immense diversity of environments. However, small pools pose significant stress to these marine mammals.
Don’t Touch
Touching dolphins in the wild can be alarmingly upsetting and potentially even harmful, as it could alter their behavior, traumatize them or even endanger themselves.
Though Flipper appears friendly enough, captive dolphins suffer greatly in captivity due to being forced into performing for tourists in small tanks thousands of times smaller than their natural environments – an experience they find unnatural and upsetting.
Don’t Chase
Dolphins are wild animals that exist within their territory, making chasing them in your pursuit an unnecessary disruption of their natural behaviors and source of stress that forces them to expend energy in order to escape from you. It is also crucial that humans avoid harassing dolphins due to being on their land. Chasing can alter their natural behavior and force them into engaging in harmful energy expenditure strategies as a form of defense mechanism against being chased away from home by forcing them out in flight mode and thus expelling energy and taking greater effort than necessary just trying to escape.
Chasing dolphins is illegal as it constitutes harassment; instead, try swimming alongside them, then gradually speeding up when leaving to minimize your impact on them.
Don’t Yell
Dolphins are sensitive creatures who will quickly be alarmed by loud yelling or noises in the water from people. Furthermore, dolphins may become confused or even distressed by people splashing and making noise in the water nearby.
Dolphins in their natural environment can travel up to 100 miles each day while socializing and hunting, so it is necessary for them to move around freely in order to remain healthy; unfortunately, tanks used as captivity for captive dolphins are much smaller than what they would experience in nature.
Don’t Jump
Try not to harass dolphins; doing so could interfere with their natural behavior and cause emotional or even physical harm to them. Instead, observe them from a boat that follows responsible dolphin watching guidelines instead.
Dolphins may appear to be resting as they slowly swim toward the surface, but most likely still need at least half their brains for sleep (spinner dolphins have two brains dedicated to sleeping). To avoid disturbing them further it’s important to maintain your distance in order not to disturb them.
Don’t Try To Pet Them
Have you seen photos of someone wearing a wetsuit smiling at dolphins? Unfortunately, dolphins do not enjoy having their face touched and will likely shy away if approached directly by humans. Instead, wait until a dolphin comes up to you before approaching one directly.
Captive dolphins may experience stress and stress-related health risks in an environment hundreds of thousands of times smaller than what they would find in nature.
Don’t Get Too Close
Respect dolphins’ natural behaviors when swimming with them either in the wild or at an ethical dolphin swim retreat. Dolphins are highly sensitive animals who will flee from perceived threats.
Avoid feeding them directly or throwing food into the water as this reinforces their behavior of approaching humans for food, increasing their chance of injury from boat motors or poachers in later life.
Don’t Yell
Swimming with dolphins can be both fascinating and intimidating – they’re fast, powerful creatures who pound the water with their tails as they swim through.
Avoid shouting as this can be perceived by captive dolphins as harassment. They are extremely sensitive to noise and movements, particularly sudden splashing movements; so before your encounter it would be best to practice relaxing techniques to reduce anxiety levels.
Don’t panic
Swimming with dolphins can be an incredible experience, yet their speed and power may initially feel intimidating for people who do not frequently swim or who lack confidence in water environments.
Sunscreen, makeup, perfume and styling products that dissolve into seawater may cause serious skin or eye irritation for dolphins, while chasing dolphins may result in serious physical harm for swimmers; including lacerations, tooth rakings and shock.
