Dolphins
 

Jacques Mayol’s very own method of communicating with a wild dolphin was: Do not go near him. Let him come to you out of simple curiosity or the clear desire to meet you. Add five kilograms to your lead belt. Put on your fins, mask and snorkel and yourself you to glide softly in the crystal-clear water.
 

That was Mayol’s usual technique, but it takes a lot of wind and breath-holding to make it work. Here is how he goes about it. “I descend in vertical position (standing), arms out, staring at the dolphin. I get down to the sand or other surface and just sit down with my legs and arms far apart. From deep in my throat I let out a few vibrations, imitating the sounds dolphins make. Generally, if the dolphin hasn't left by then, he starts to swim around me and ultimately moves into the field bordered by my two extended arms and my body.
”As soon as he passes through this invisible and subtle border, contact is actually established. It works just about every time! In this case, it was a cinch. After a few moments of hesitation, the young dolphin did exactly what I thought he would do. Was it a kind of telepathy or just hypnosis? Regardless, he entered my field of aura’ and I felt that I had won him over.”
 

It was in the mid 1980s. I would usually leave my home on Belle Sound on South Caicos in a fast flat-bottom boat with one or two friends to go to my favorite place. It was a wild spot around 20 nautical miles away, at the northern tip of the large island of East Caicos in the middle of Jacksonville Bay. There is a very picturesque islet there named Iguana Cay. It's the ideal place for camping because, for a reason I never really understood, there are never any mosquitoes and very few insects. The iguanas reign on the island, but they don't bother people at all. Who knows? Maybe the mosquitoes and the iguanas don't get along!
The inner lagoon is strikingly beautiful. The reflections of the crystal-clear water are reminiscent of a kaleidoscope depending on the time of day. Fish and lobsters are everywhere.
 

One day, when Sylias Elliot (nicknamed Bull-Joint) and I were hooking lobsters from the cracks of one of our favorite rocks, a young dolphin suddenly swam toward us and looked like he wanted to play. We were flabbergasted. Of course, I had often seen dolphins, usually in groups, around South Caicos. But never here, even though I had been coming to the area for years. Where in the devil did he come from? What was he doing here? He looked like a male and behaved like a male: powerful and firm, and he looked like he was trying to get attention.
I later found out that the lone dolphin was actually looking for human company. He was even given the name Jojo (like the famous giant grouper in Jacques Cousteau's first film, "The World of Silence").