Last night- yes I’m going back to yesterday because this is just too cool- I was watching a movie in the crew lounge with some friends/fellow crew. The phone rang, I thought it was on the movie but it was our ship phone which meant someone from another part of the ship was calling. Clayton picked up the receiver and when he placed it back down again he had a message from the bridge- ‘Dolphins on the bow’. Now we generally get happy about dolphins on the bow in the daytime, but at night? We ran up the stairs. As I ran down the outside 200 companionway the daily routineness of the boat that I’ve lived on for the past five and a half months dissolved and the whole moment took on a romantic quality, even the familiar walkway. Daisey must have felt this too because later she said “I’m in love, I’m just in love! Not with anything, just in love!” It no longer felt like the boat but a ship, and had that excitement that the people who vacation here must feel.
I was amazed at how quietly we ran. I was already taking this in, feeling myself run past guest cabins soundlessly and then I realized that Daisey too was running behind me. I hadn’t noticed because of her equally silent pace. As we reached the bow I touched the railing and felt fine salt that had blown in and built up. I knew that if I could see it it would be sparkling. But we couldn’t see much making our way to the bow, it was very dark. We did make our way, Daisey clutching my arm because we couldn’t see anything. Finding the bow we leaned over the railing into the dark water.
Dolphns leapt ahead of our boat, visible because of Baja’s magical bioluminescence, their bodies outlined glowingly. Sometimes you’d see a jet of light come in from the side and join in. We could see them jump out of the water, hear them take in oxygen. The night was dark, moonless as she had disappeared sometime ago, only the stars were bright. And many.
I don’t even know who was on the bow experiencing this with us. Leah was there on my right, Daisey on my left, all of us leaning on the bow, our heads poking over. I just know there were lots of giggles and exclamations at the wonder of it. I know it was lovely. And it was lovely afterwards to look up and see the stars. Daisey and I stayed after the dolphins and the other humans had gone. She told me that when she was a deckhand she was doing a bridge watch at night in Baja and she spotted something. It looked like a sailboat, one they were about to run into. They couldn’t figure out where it had come from, it wasn’t on the radar, and they were a little nervous. And then they realized that it was a bioluminescent whale, moving around in the water.
I went to bed thinking about the dolphins, about what we saw, about the idyllic feel of the moment. I woke up thinking about it too.
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This morning before guest breakfast Leah leaped through the dining room doors excited and happy, and ran through the back to the fantail. I wondered what on earth was going on to get this reaction and went up to the lido after asking Tom and realizing we were seeing whales. I didn’t see them while I was out and went back down to setup. Leah came back into the dining room and freaked out looking out the window. There were humpbacks and they were breaching. And when I say breaching I mean dancing, and leaping, and spinning out of the water. It was incredible. I haven’t seen them do this yet, we just changed our Baja route and apparently we’ll see it often now. Raz told me that last year they were having apps on deck and saw a hundred breaches. I have a bookmark that a past crew member bought me in Alaska of humpbacks dancing and this was it. I didn’t know I would see it. My goodness.
It reminded me of Psalms that talk about all the earth rejoicing, all the earth, the sea and everything in it praising the Lord. I learned today while cleaning rooms that all the humpbacks in the ocean, in different parts, far apart, sing the same song and that from when they leave the breeding areas like Baja and go to the feeding places like Alaska, when they return to the breeding areas the song has changed, gone on, but they’re all still singing the change. How does this happen? they ask. Because our God is so good, so mysterious and wonderful. That’s how.
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