Marine Life

When I started college, I wanted to be a Marine Biologist. That had been my life long goal since I was a kid. Since I spent a lot of time at the beach as a kid, I've always been completely in love and fascinated by all sea creatures. I just love being on or near the ocean. LOVE IT.

Whenever we'd visit my sister K. and her family when they lived in Anaheim, one of my absolute favorite places to go was Marine World down south - before it moved up north. And I could (and would) spend hours at the dolphin 'tank' - they had the dolphins out in big pools and they'd swim around and if you were patient, you could touch them sometimes as they swam by. I would have stayed there all day if I could. And I learned that if I made a little noise, it attracted them and they'd come closer and I could have the joy of feeling their skin more often.

I did my thesis for my A.S. degree on dolphin echolocation - about how they talk to each other and how their hearing works. I wanted so badly to be working with dolphins. That was my dream. I moved to Southern California where I attended a J.C. for 1 1/2 years (did 1/2 a year in Phoenix) and majored in Life Sciences. I had the goal of transferring to a four year university to continue studying and majoring in Biology with an emphasis in Marine Biology.

Two things happened. First, I needed a job - I wanted my independence and that required money. So I started working at Mervyn's. And within 8 months, I was supervising people and that required working full time. Now, a Science major requires a lot of labs. A LOT OF LABS. You cannot be a science major and attend classes at night. These days, you might be able to do it because education has figured out that people who want to be educated also have to hold down jobs - so with online classes and Saturday labs, you might be able to manage it. That was not the case when I was in school. So I had to make the choice: stay as a Bio major and live with my brother and his wife indefinitely? Or continue moving up the ladder at Mervyn's and take the supervisory job and therefore, switch to a Business Major - something I could easily complete by attending classes at night - which would provide just enough income to allow me to live on my own. I was ready for that 'independence'. So, that's what I did.

Now this makes changing that life dream sound awfully easy - like it must not have been much of a real desire, given how easily I just tossed it to the curb. That wasn't true, really. But I'd come to the realization that what I really wanted to do was work with dolphins. And if you think about it, there aren't many jobs out there that lend themselves to that goal - true, there are Marine parks across the country. And if I was in the military, I'm sure that might be feasibly possible. But just getting a job with a Marine Biology degree that was hands on with dolphins would be pretty darn thin pickins'. And so I let go of that dream. I didn't want to end up with a degree in Science and find myself sitting in a white lab coat testing theories about dolphins - I wanted to WORK with them, all day everyday. What my dream really involved was to be the female Jacques Cousteau - to spend my time living with and sharing my love of dolphins with everyone on the planet. And Jacques was already doing a pretty darn good job of that (I still have ALL of the books in his series about Marine Life upstairs and no matter how much culling we do, I refuse to part with them. NEVER.) And when I realized that was not likely to happen, it made the 'letting go' of the dream a bit easier.

On our trip to Hawaii, we saw whales the very first night - they were not right in front of our balcony, but they were visible with the naked eye from our balcony. And we also saw sea turtles - they WERE just off the balcony and played in the waves every single night we were there. We became experts at spotting them - though they are pretty hard to capture in pictures since the blend in with the waves.

And then, on our sailing trip, we saw this:

and this:

These pictures were taken by just pointing the camera at the water and shooting. They were everywhere around the boat, at least for a short time - and my heart was so excited to see them, I could hardly stand it. It was magic. Pure magic. I wished I could just 'abandon ship' and jump in after them and just BE with them for as long as they'd tolerate a human presence. And someday, swimming with the dolphins is on my list of things I want to do before I die. MUST do before I die. I could spend day after day on a sail boat just 'following' them to wherever they want to lead. If I'd been the captain, I would have headed out to deeper water just to stay with them...and if I'm every independently wealthy, I would charter a sailboat for a day or two and give the Captain the order 'follow dolphins. That's all I want you do to'. It would be glorious.

More Hawaii pics soon!