I am feeling slightly ridiculous as I sit on a dock that juts into an artificial lagoon and stroke a dolphin's nose with my feet. The stroking is a handshake of sorts, a way of introducing me and four other people at the Hyatt Waikoloa in Hawaii to the dolphins with whom we will be swimming. We are the latest of roughly 15,000 customers who have paid $55 for half-hour frolics with six dolphins since the Hyatt program began a year ago. The enterprise, one of four operating in the U.S., is so popular that spots have to be awarded by lottery.
After more instruction -- "Don't pet them around the blowhole; avoid their eyes" -- and a petting session during which we rub the dolphins' rubbery heads and bellies, we walk to a beach to begin our 20-minute swim. As we enter the water, George DelMonte of the San Francisco area tells me that the chance to swim with dolphins was a principal reason that he and his girlfriend chose to stay at the Hyatt. Encumbered by life jackets that serve mainly to prevent the overeager from pursuing animals to the depths, we flounder about as the young dolphins carve intricate underwater arcs through our midst, occasionally stopping to toss balls with their noses.
As I watch my fellow human swimmers' expressions, which range from the merely ecstatic to the truly transported, the question arises, How can this be bad? The program is operated by two acknowledged marine-mammal experts whose company, Dolphin Quest, has created a sandy bottomed, virtually natural lagoon for the animals. Still, for some conservationists, "dolphin-fondling" programs (as they are dismissively called) are just one more way in which humans deprive highly intelligent animals of their freedom and put them at risk of disease or mishandling for the entertainment of customers and the enrichment of owners.
Over the years, marine mammals have become big box office. Around the U.S., amusement parks and aquariums pack spectators into dolphin and killer-whale shows. Companies have organized whale-watching voyages and party-boat trips to feed wild dolphins. One promoter has even proposed an underwater birthing facility where dolphins would serve as "midwives" for human deliveries.
For the moment, though, nothing angers some conservationists so much as the swim-with-dolphin programs. The critics say the new fad stretches the limits of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which allows the "display" of dolphins under tightly regulated conditions but says nothing about programs in which people interact with the animals. The National Marine Fisheries Service, which monitors the capture and treatment of marine mammals, is holding a series of meetings to determine whether it should revise the way it permits private interests to use dolphins. For the swim programs, the stakes are high: they will have to shut down at the end of the year should NMFS decide they are not in the best interest of the animals.