Much as I love the mountains, I choose to live by the ocean. I was born close to the coast of North West of England, and wherever I have lived in the Canary Islands, I’ve never been more than ten minutes away from the sea, much of the time I’ve been able to watch it from my window. So, I suppose you can say that I am drawn to it. At one time, I had a twenty minute walk to work right along a coastal pathway, where I often saw dolphins passing, framed against the light of the rising sun, as they rose and dove with the waves. It was a bleak-ish period of my life, and that sight would put everything bad about my day into perspective. Perhaps that’s one reason I feel so passionately about them. One thing you take away from sighting dolphins in the wild is the sense of freedom. They can travel up to 100 miles in a day. There is, quite simply, NO WAY that they belong in concrete tanks, being treated like slaves or toy poodles for human amusement.
I am incredibly lucky to have landed up close to a part of the ocean with an amazing biodiversity. I’ve also been incredibly lucky to have spent many hours on this strip of the Atlantic, on whale watching trips, on yachts and private boats, even watching as dolphins played in the wake of the ferries on my trip around the islands four years back. For a period, I went out most weekends, almost always seeing dolphins.
Lying on my stomach on the prow of the boat, feeling as if I was swimming with them as they played alongside is as near to zen as I have ever been.
Islandmomma 