A July sun shines as our boat, the Girl Deborah, sails near the rocky mouth of Dingle Harbor, on Ireland's wild, western coast. Some 30 pairs of eyes are fixed on the water. Suddenly, a young woman points and cries: "Look!" Just a stone's skip away, an enormous dolphin soars high in the air, tracing a giant are againt the sky. The creature plunges nose-first into the water, then rockets back out again, jumping joyfully in graceful ellipses once, twice, three times.
"That's an extra fiver!" jokes our boat's captain, delighted at having introduced us to Fungie, Ireland's friendly dolphin.
For centuries Dingle Harbor - home to an isolated fishing village called Dingle - has provided seafarers safe have from the pounding swells of the Atlantic Ocean. In 1983 fishermen noticed that it had attracted a new visitor. They began to see a dolphin swimming alongside their trawlers as they sailed out to open sea. Although tradition held that a dolphin was a sign of good luck, the mammals occasionally became tangled in their giant nets - and the fishermen sometimes killed them, for a dead carcass was far easier to remove from the expensive nets than a desperately fighting mammal. This dolphin not only avoided the nets - he ventured into the harbor. He' ll soon move on, the men assumed.
But he appeared every morning and evening like clockwork. As each trawler left the pier in the day's first light, the dolphin would swim playfully alongside. At the mouth of the harbor he turned back. Some days he followed as many as 30 boats.
As dusk approached and the men sailed back into the harbor, he would race to meet them. He would swim next to their trawlers until they neared the pier, then swim back to accompany the next boat.
The fishermen dubbed him Fungie after a fisherman who was trying to grow a beard - but only managing a scruffy, fungus-like covering. The dolphin's skin is silky-smooth, but he was from then on known as "Fungie."
One aftrnoon in 1984 John O'Connor, a local electrician, was snorkeling with his daughter when suddenly she glimpsed a dolphin swimming underneath her on its back, looking up at her. The 12-year-old's eyes widened in amazement as the dolphin accompanied her and her father into the shore.
From then on the swimmers and divers off Dingle's coast got used to Fungie's presence - and Fungie grew increasingly interested in them. John O' Connor and Ronnie Fitzgibbon, both expert divers, began to swim regularly with Fungie. Gradually the dolphin's trust in his human playmates grew, and by 1986 he was playful and affectionate. "He'd grab one of our flippers in his mouth or bump and nudeg us to get a scratch," John says. "He'd actually annoy you he was so persistent."
But Fungie quickly proved he was more than just a mischievous playmate. One day a diver was climbing into an inflatable boat when he dropped his mask and snorkel overboard. Donning another diver's mask, he dived in to find his own. After ten minutes Ronnie splashed in to help. As he looked for the mask, he felt Fungie nudging his shoulder every so often. Assuming the dolphin wanted to play, Ronnie ignored him.
Finally, Ronnie glanced out of the corner of this eye and spotted something in the dolphin's mouth. Turning, he saw Fungie was holding the lost equipment, patiently waiting for his friend to notice.
Fungie quickly became Dingle's most popular resident. Locals walked along a grassy cliff by the harbor to get a glimpse of the creature, or took their families on Sunday motorboat spins to visit him. Fishermen removed nets from areas where the dolphin swam, even at the risk of missing a catch, for fear Fungie might get fatally tan-gled in them.
Far away, television crews in Dublin and London got word of the phenomenon. When they came to Dingle, Fungie was happy to perform. While on TV crew's underwater cameras rolled, the show's presener - clad in acuba-diving gear for the firt time - sat nervously on the harbor bottom. Fungie stared into his face mask, maneuvered himself lower and lower, then gently rested his head on the man's lap.
As word of the friendly dolphin trickled out more and more visitors streamed in, and for years the creature has healed, inspired, and befriended townspeople and visitors alike.
Among them was Hilary Taylor, a woman from England, who traveled to Dingle feeling numb and empty following the death of her son. Eight months earlier, the 24-year-old expert diver had died underwater while trying to bring up the anchor of a friend's boat.
One morning before sunrise, Hilary walked along a stretch of beach Fungie frequented. In the blustery weather Hilary's grief poured forth. When there were no more tears to shed, she looked across the water and cried out, "I love you!"
Suddenly, Fungie appeared, swimming towards her. He stopped and his head bobbed out of the waves, just ten feet away. The dolphin took a noisy breath - spurting air and water from his blowhole - and disappeared. He heard me! Hilary thought, feeling a spark of joy for the first time since her son's death.
For a week, Hilary swam with Fungie every day. He seemed to take to her, allowing her to run her hand along the slippery length of his enormous frame. The soothing water, The attentiveness of the giant, gentle creature, the happiness she saw in his friendly, smiling face - all helped Hilary begin to feel again.
"Fungie was part of my healing," she says now. "I was allowing the love he was giving me to come in, and fill a part of the gaping hole in my heart that my son's death had left."
Kevin Flannery, the Dingle-based control officer for Ireland's Department of marine, has obwerved Fungie closely nearly every day since 1983. He suspects Fungie was once in captivity, perhaps released from a dolphinarium in Great Britain. "He's obviously used to humans," Kevin says. "Just about every month 18 to 20 dolphins come into the harbor, play with Fungie, feed with him, mate with him. Then they leave and he stays. That tells me he's different."
Elsewher in the world, cases have been recorded of lone dolphins venturing into shallow waters and befriending people. But Fungie has lived in this particular harbor for 13 consecutive years. "To my knowledge this is one of the longes documented periods that a single, 'friendly' dolphin has stayed around, " say a cetacean researcher. Most disappeared or died within years.
That might have been Fungie's fate in 1989. When it was announced that Dingle's harbor had to be dynamited to make it deeper for the larger fishing vessels, locals were concerned about the risks to Fungie. John, Ronnie and other members of the diving club consulted experts, who advised that just the shock waves from the dynamite blasts could damage the dolphin's sonar, leaving him unable to survive. We' ve got to protect Fungie, John thought. The divers learned that while shock waves travel for miles, they travel in a straight line. That gave them the information they needed to hatch a plan.
On an August morning, John, Ronnie and some of the other divers drove their motorboat out of the harbor, luring Fungie with them. At the harbor's narrow mouth, they took a right turn around a rocky headland and idled the boat. Fungie leaped about playfully, unaware that he was here so the rocky cliff would protect him from dangerous shock waves.
"We've got Fungie here," John radioed back to shore. Then the divers jumped in and kept the dolphin occupied while the blasters set off the dynamite. John and his men only left the water when a voice crackled through the radio: "Okay, we're finished for today." The team effort went on for three weeks. Even the national electricity company pitched in, paying for the fuel and meals.
Today, the dolphin brings joy not just to Dingle natives but to people from all over the world. At the height of summer, hundreds of visitors a day board special viewing boats to see him. British poet Heathcote Williams was so moved after swimming with Fungie after he was commissioned to write the libretto for a new opera entitled Arion and the Dolphin. He was so in spired that he dedicated the work to Fungie and wrote a children's book of the same title.
But Fungie's greatest gift is presented to the dozens of handicapped and sick children that smim with him every summer. Last year, it was the turn of five-year-old Hughie Hamilton, who has cerebral palsy.
Hughie couldn't stand on his own and is able to walk only with the help of a walker. During daily therapy sessions at his home in London, Hughie would lie on a therapy table as his mother manipulated his arms and legs. Often, the tow-headed boy cried in frustration. One day, to relax her son, the mother said, "Pretend you're in the ocean, swimming with a dolphin."
Intrigued, Hughie calmed down quickly, listening to his mother describe him frolicking in the sea with a friendly dolphin. Soon, Hughie was "swimming" with the solphin daily. Finally his mother wondered, What if I took him to swim with a real one? After some research, she learned about Fungie.
As the sun rose over Dingle Harbor, Hughie's parents watched as he floated face down, holding his breath just as he had practiced so many times in the bathtub. Suddenly, the boy's heaf froze. The dolphin had swum up beneath him. For several long seconds Hughie floated atop the water, staring down into the eyes of Fungie. Finally, Hughie raised his head, coughing and sputtering - and smiling broadly.
"Magic," Hughie said, his eyes shining. "It was magic."
Back home two weeks later, Hughie seemed much better able to concentrate and relax. "Since he swam with Fungie, I see in him a new optimism," his mother says. "There is this kind of ease."
No one knows why Fungie seems to be able to heal hurt and assuage grief. Many people believe that dolphins' sophisticated sonar system allows them to sense and repond to people's emotional states. After spending days watching Fungie interact with people, I believe the explanation is much simpler: Fungie embodies all that is worthwhile in our lives; he is joy, freedom, love - capped by a contagious grin
Nor does anyone know why he chose this cliffshrouded harbor as his home. Every bar-stool expert in Dingle has a theory. One thing is certain: This wild mammal is a gift who has inspired the artistic to create, the bereaved to hope, and the sad to smile.
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