Back in March, we attended a really interesting talk on dolphins, organized by the Kuching branch of the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS). It was given by Cindy Peter from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), and at the end, she offered to accompany us all on a dolphin-spotting trip.

Oh yes, we were all keen on that... So our hard-working MNS officers did the organizing, and today it happened.

Now, we all understand that you don't always see what you set out to see... There's nothing as unpredictable as a wild animal. In fact, we'd done a similar trip in March 2018, and though it was very enjoyable, we saw no dolphins.

The picture at the top is a bit of a spoiler, as it makes clear that we DID see some Irrawaddy dolphins today. A pod of six, to be precise.

But let's start at the very beginning. An MNS committee member kindly gave us a lift, and we parked up by the village mosque. The heavy shower that we'd encountered on the way had exhausted itself by the time we got there.

We hadn't been to Santubong for a while. It's always impressive over there, with the village nestling beneath the pointy mountain, and the estuary stretching out before you:




We split up into two boatloads, and set off from the little jetty:











So we're all enjoying ourselves, snapping away at the scenery, and watching the acrobatic terns, and the shoals of little fish skittering across the surface, and thinking how nice it is to be on the water. (Terns and little fish are totally impossible to photograph, of course.)

But what you really want to see is the dolphins...

And suddenly, we did:


It is INCREDIBLY hard to get photos of these guys. They're up and down in an instant. We've seen dolphins lots of times -- off the coast of France and New Zealand, in the Mahakam River in Indonesia, and in the Bosphorus in Turkiye -- and this is the first time we've ever been able to photograph them.

Their movements made clear that they were feeding:





They cruised around for quite a while, and then they were off. We didn't even see which direction they went in...

So we headed off to Salak Island, which is differently interesting:








We saw a couple of proboscis monkeys:



And here's a jellyfish:


All in all, a great morning out. It always feels like a massive privilege to see wild animals in their home environment. Go well, dolphins and all the rest of you. May you live long and multiply.