Chapter 6: A Dolphin's Tale

When they found themselves in the vicinity of spinner dolphins employing their fishing technique, the Dyke-lander's took advantage of the rare opportunity by swimming along the outside edge of the bubble-net, and then barely breaking through to the inside edge just enough to scoop up some fish.  It took a fair amount of precision on their part since it was important to stay away from centre of the corralled fish where the dolphins fed,  each taking a turn to break away from the group and then coming up from below, swimming straight up through the centre of the tightly amassed fish to grab a mouthful before breaking the surface and leaping vertically into the air.   It wasn't very often that   each dolphin had a chance to feed before their activity attracted unwanted competition that resulted in a feeding frenzy so fierce that both Dyke-lander and dolphin were forced out.

From the  chance encounters the Dyke-lander's gained a deep respect for the dolphin's intelligence and gentle spirit, and as for the dolphin's, they simply tolerated the Dyke-lander's because even though the odd looking split tailed creatures broke into their bubble nets to steal fish, they did so with consideration, taking care not to interfere with their own feeding or to indiscriminately destroy their bubble nets like the others that happened by.

There were those in the tribe who were of the mind that more benefits could be had from interactions with dolphins if the gain was mutual.  The question then, was how to communicate that they had something to trade.  An advantage that the Dyke-lander's had was that their nets enabled them a fair size catch within the short duration of time, fish that they would be willing to share, but the problem was how to do this when the dolphins left the scene much too fast for the Dyke-landers to keep up in their slow and clumsy coracles.  

Strangely enough, the dolphins inadvertently provided the breakthrough when they began to employ another technique used only after spotting the telltale phosphorescent glow beneath the waters surface.  A sequence of rapid fire click's piercing the night air served as a signal for the rest of the pod to regroup, a  call they once used below the surface they began to use above, a means of alerting   members of their pod while avoiding the eavesdropping of unwanted competition.  Of course not all there competition were eliminated-- the sea birds and Dyke-lander's benefitted from the dolphins new alert system.  

The Dyke-lander's thought that if they could mimic the sound, the dolphins would come to them, but no matter how hard the most gifted of their tribe tried, duplicating the rapid-fire sequence of click's was impossible.  The Dyke-landers didn't have the lung capacity nor the dexterity in their vocal chords to produce the chorus of sound, and at the very most, only three clicks could be had in sequence.  It was to the point that most had given up and only the most persistent and talented kept trying, until one day, and strictly by chance, three individuals who were practicing in close proximity to one another had each performed 3 rapid fire click's in perfect sequence to one another. The 9 clicks were were identical to the call they had been trying to mimic.  

When putting it to the test for the first time, a nearby pod of spinner dolphins came from every direction only to find no fish, but the floating objects carrying the creatures they had become familiar with.  It was a confusing moment for the pod of dolphins arriving to the calls location... after-all what dolphin among them would give the signal when there was no fish to be found?!  As the dolphins made a wide sweeping circle around the coracles and were about to leave, several members in the coracles made the clicking chorus once again, and the curious dolphins couldn't help but draw close enough to then see the offering of live fish being held out to them.  After taking their fill, the dolphins left as they always did, but this time there was a growing fondness for the strange looking creatures seemingly unsuited to their water world. 

From that day forward, whenever the dolphins and Dyke-lander's fished, they would do so quickly and then part together long before the arrival of competition, moving to safer waters where the Dyke-landers would share their catch.  Over a great period of time the niche shared by the two immigrant species helped to bring about so many other benefits, such as to call the dolphins to the shores of their island homes whenever preparing to venture out to sea.  The dolphins would come, spearing with their noses the rings tossed out to them, rings that were also attached to coracles.  The Dyke-lander's had learned to harness the towing power of their new friends and so the fishing expeditions that once took them an entire night, could  be done in a third of the time.  

And there came another time when many became of the mind that the use of fire at night might help increase their yield of fish, with light hanging over the sea serving to lure the great schools into thinking the glow was the result of other sardines having found a drifting mass of plankton.  Even though it was an idea worth exploring, it wasn't as easy as that since there were many in the tribe who felt that such an experiment would be against one of Ayah's most sacred golden rules - to remain invisible to their enemy living on the mainland.  Lighting a fire over the sea would surely draw the unwanted attention of the Hinter-landers.