تفسیر درس

##Dolphins – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Dolphins. I want you to think about the animal, dolphin, for a moment. What comes to mind? What do you think about when you see a picture of a dolphin or you maybe see a dolphin in a movie or on television? Or if you just think about a picture in your mind of a dolphin, what do you think about?

What I think about, what dolphins always make me think about is joyfulness and playfulness.

Now the reason I think of dolphins being very joyful and playful is because I’ve seen them in movies or TV shows or maybe videos on the internet, where I’ve seen them interacting with each other and just being very playful. It brings a smile to me to think of how they interact with each other and the games that they can play.

Now I’ve never seen…I have seen dolphins in the wild, so I’ve seen them in the ocean. I’ve never seen any river dolphins. I have seen them in the ocean. Never seen them playing though.

I’ve only seen them from a boat so I’ve seen many, a pod, a group of them swimming together.

When they’re swimming as a group you see them come up out of the water a little bit and then they go under again and that’s how they swim.

So that was, I’ve seen them two different times. One time on a boat off of an island in Indonesia, an island called Bunaken Island where I was actually going out on a boat to go do some scuba diving. And then I saw them another time on a boat off of the island of Maui. Maui is one of the Hawaiian island. And again, so both times they were just swimming in a group. Now, in that particular time as well, in Maui, I was on a boat going to do some scuba diving.

So unfortunately, even though both times I saw them off of a boat, I was going scuba diving, I’ve never actually seen any dolphins while scuba diving although I would love to. Because I think, for one thing, to see an animal that big in the water with you that’s not dangerous, because dolphins are not dangerous, I think it would just be amazing. Most of the things that I do see when I scuba dive are very small. And that’s okay, too.

But I think to see dolphins while scuba diving I would actually probably get to see them playing and interacting in that way which is maybe a little more difficult from looking at them from a boat, y’know, from above the water. So when I’ve seen, whenever I’ve seen dolphins playing, like I’ve said in a movie or a TV show or, y’know, in a video on the internet, to me it’s always a reminder because they make me think of joyfulness and playfulness, it’s a reminder to maybe bring into my life more play and more joy.

It actually also reminds me, thinking of dolphins playing together, reminds me of growing up many, many summers in the neighborhood, the area where I grew up, there was a swimming pool that was shared by all the people in my neighborhood. And my cousin would come over.

She’s just one year younger than me. She would come over many times each summer, spend the night with me, and we would spend all day in the swimming pool just playing together. I loved it.

I would…because of the bottom of the swimming pool, the concrete, what the swimming pool was made of, was a little bit rough, we would be in the swimming pool all day to the point where our feet at night would be sore. We would have these sores on the bottoms of our feet, especially our toes, from standing on the bottom of the swimming pool, just playing around. And sometimes they’d even be bleeding, they’d be so sore. Because we would spend all day in the swimming pool.

We just loved it. We loved swimming and splashing each other and playing. And, y’know, we would be out in the sun all day so our skin color would start to change. It would get darker. My hair color would get lighter. It was just a lot of fun. It was a great way to spend my summers when I was younger. And it’s also great, my birthday is in August and so a lot of my birthdays when I was younger, I would have my friends over on my birthday and we would celebrate by playing in the swimming pool.

So along with being very social animals, dolphins, orcas, they’re very social animals. They’re very intelligent animals. They…they’ve also, dolphins is what I’m speaking about now, dolphins have actually been known also to save lives. They’ve been known to save…there have been stories of them saving people’s lives, dogs’ lives, whales’ lives.

Just look it up on the internet. There’s many stories. There was one story I read one time about a dolphin saving a little boy that fell off a boat and he couldn’t swim and the dolphin…there happened to be a dolphin in the water and brought him up, the little boy, up to the surface, the top of the water where his father could then get him and put him back on the boat before he drowned, before he died. So this dolphin saved him.

And there was another story I read about a wildlife filmmaker who was in the water, the ocean, I don’t know where he was, but he was in the ocean filming a group of dolphins and all of a sudden he saw a shark coming at him in attack mode. The shark was swimming right towards him to attack him. It was a very dangerous situation. And four of the dolphins from the group swam over really quickly and stopped this shark from attacking this man. Amazing story.

And there was one other story I read. This was off of New Zealand where a man was out in the ocean swimming with his daughter and his daughter’s two friends, so there were four of them.

And all of a sudden he noticed that there were dolphins that were swimming around them and kind of pushing he and his daughter and her friends together. He thought they were playing.

He thought the dolphins were just playing and so he was trying to swim away from them after a short time. And the dolphins just kept pushing them together. And then he realized, I guess maybe he went underwater and he could see and he realized there was a shark, a big great white shark, very aggressive shark swimming towards them.

So the dolphins were keeping them together and there were…there were a few dolphins and they were swimming around them protecting them. I think that’s an amazing story, too. Y’know, how amazing that these creatures were protecting these people, of a completely different species and they knew that they were in danger and they were trying to help them. And they ended up being fine, the father and his daughter and her two friends, thanks to these dolphins.

So with that said, I would just…I would like to say, y’know, dolphins, orcas, they’re, all sea creatures, they’re very special. I mean I think all animals are special. I’m a big huge animal lover. But, y’know, let’s focus on dolphins and even orcas here for a moment. They’re very special. And in my opinion, dolphins don’t belong in captivity. Orcas don’t belong in captivity.

Y’know, we spoke about the documentary Blackfish in the conversation. And if you’re able to get a copy of that documentary, that movie, I highly recommend watching it to get an understanding of the effects of captivity on orcas, in particular. It doesn’t really talk about dolphins, it’s mostly orcas. Although orcas are dolphins, they’re just a bigger, a bigger kind of dolphin. But I highly recommend the movie Blackfish.

And also, in my opinion, dolphins, whales, they should not be slaughtered. Y’know, this happens in certain areas around the world. One, another documentary, if you can get a copy of this in your country, I would highly recommend it, is the documentary or movie called The Cove. And so with it being a documentary, it’s an actual real movie, real people, showing something that is really going on as far as slaughtering or killing dolphins in the wild, many of them at one time.

In my opinion, this shouldn’t be happening. And it’s up to people to, I think, protect and take care of them.

They’re very special. What dolphins and orcas and all water animals actually, what they do deserve is a safe, clean ocean to be living in. And I can tell you, y’know, the times I’ve gone scuba diving, there has been many places, unfortunately, where the water is not clean. There’s trash. It’s heartbreaking to see this.

So, y’know, again it’s the responsibility of humans to show kindness to these water animals as well as to the earth and not be throwing trash on the beach, not be throwing trash in the ocean.

And it’s also our Dolphins responsibility, the responsibility of humans to get rid of toxins in, y’know, safely. So that they don’t end up in the ocean.

Okay, those are my opinions because, again, I am a huge animal lover and this actually concludes the commentary for the conversation Dolphins. So I hope you have a great month and I’ll see you next time.