The Night is Our Companion

Supercollider particle collision tracks.

AT THE APEX OF OUR OFFSHORE ARC a variant to the pitch-blackness of our surroundings had occurred: a boundless super pod of dolphins blew in to our little bowl of ocean on a calm, starless night. We had just glided past a stealthy, gray whale, asleep at the surface as dusk was busy transforming into night. And it was at that moment, materializing out of the depths, that the collective energy of a universe of dolphins took charge of our surroundings, overrunning Anna's curvy black undersides. An astonishing event, as they remained with us both in close company and as far as the eye could see, until the twilight of predawn erased the blackness.

It could be described as highly-organized chaos - the excitation of these good-natured creatures who proceeded to rocket across Anna's bows, darting and diving and exhaling and hissing. Hot missiles locked-on target. We were lit-up in the darkness by tracers of bioluminescence. As with the purity of amplified light emitted from an argon laser, or the particle tracks left behind in the wake of a supercollider event, the tracers of hundreds upon hundreds, perhaps thousands upon thousands of excited dolphins, speeding through the blackness of the sea, randomly crisscrossing and lighting up our course for the duration of the night, had achieved an hypnotic effect.

And as the wind steadily built through the very late hours, Anna's hull-speed increased, exponentially. She sped along with her port rail down, skimming the waves and leaving a fizzing, sparkling, diamond-like bioluminescent spray and wake of her own. And as the waves rushed under Anna's rail and trailed away quickly, the dolphins matched her velocity, knot for knot and with a tremendous quantity of energy to spare, before ratcheting up their own level of wild intensity. The excitement was contagious and it went on like this hour after hour and it was all we could do to simply sit back, strap in, and try to comprehend what we were experiencing: this truly enigmatic behavior and interaction, between Anna, seemingly speeding along and leading a life of her own, and her new pals, her mates, her infinite multitude of nighttime companions, sharing with us, the late watch.

A small segment of a dolphin super pod.