My new years resolution is to gain some muscle this year. I would like to build up my arms, stomach and legs so that I look stronger and so that I can do alot more sports. I plan on doing this by playing more sports and doing more exercise. My second new years resolution is to learn a new skill like Aussie rules. iI you guys don't know what that is, it is Australian rules football. If you don't know what that is then you should search it up. There lots of information about how to play and skills such as drop kicking, marking and hand balling. My Dad taught me how to mark over the Christmas vacation and I was pretty good. We had lots of fun.
Now I am going to tell you a little story about what I did over the Christmas vacation. I will tell you about when I swam with dolphins!! So on the first day my mum told me that the next day we would be swimming with the dolphins at Rockingham Beach. I was so happy. But the bad news was we would have to wake up at 6:00am! It was a half hour drive to Rockingham, which is where the boat was. The drive was not that bad and I didn't complain to much. When we got there, there were so many people on the boat so we just got on the boat too.
Once we were on the boat the captain told us what would be happening that day and what the rules were. Then they handed out wetsuits to everybody, but they only had one small wetsuit and someone else had gotton it before me. I had to get the lady to get another small one for me from the shed. It only took fifteen minutes for her to bring me the wetsuit. I can tell you one thing for sure, wetsuits are crazy to get on and when you do get them on they are crazy uncomfortable.
We all had a coloured belt on and the idea of that was so when we were close to the dolphins the leader would say for example, green belts and black belts. The green and black belts would go to the back of the boat and there would be a green leader and a black leader that worked thereand you would have to follow their instructions. I was in green team. Once you quietly hop in the water you would hold on to the person's belt in front of you so you would make a line. The person behind the leader at the front would hold the leader's belt. The leader would have an aqua scooter so they could move around a lot easier so we could get close to the dolphins.
We were not allowed to touch the dolphins because they are wild animals and if you touch wild dolphins it can kill them. Wild dolphins have a protective layer of skin and when you touch that layer it can kill that layer. The protective layer makes sure the dolphin does not get sick or sun burned so it won't get skin cancer and if you touch it the bacteria on your hand will go onto the dolphin. By now you are proubaly thinking about dolphins kept in aquariums or things like that where you can touch dolphins. Well that is because the water they live in is chlorinated so there is no bacteria in the water and if the dolphins do get sick they are trained to get medicine from their trainers. The dolphins I swam with were wild, but anyway back to the story.
When they called green team first, me and my family raced over and got in quietly (oh and one other thing, they did give us snorkles and masks so we could watch the dolphins underwater. It was amazing!). When we were in the water there were so many dolphins around, about twenty in the water at one stage! Five dolphins swam under me I could have touched them they were so close (but I didn't!) and at one stage a dolphin came right up to me and we were like eye to eye.
There was this one girl that worked there and her job was awesome - she was the dolphin girl. She had an aqua scooter and her job was to go underwater and to try and play with the dolphins and to bring them closer to the surface and to us, it was amazing.
After our first dolphin swim, the green team we called in a few more times before it was time to head back to the jetty. when we were on our way back, some of the dolphins were diving and playing in the boat's wake. They looked like they were having so much fun. . When we got to the jetty we thanked the captain and sais goodbye and then we got off the boat and headed home.
And just remember... NEVER TOUCH A WILD DOLPHIN !!!