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Swim with Dolphins Big Island. Many tours are offered at discount pricing.
This 'Swim with Dolphins Big Island' category page is your ticket to a wonderful Dolphin Swim in Kona. To swim with dolphins on the Big Island in the open ocean is a dream most people would love to come true. With the possible exception of swimming with dolphins off the Waianae Coast of Oahu, the Dolphin Swim off Kona is truly the only Hawaiian location that your wild dolphin swim fantasy can actually become a reality.
- It is remarkable how many days out of the year we can actually not only find the dolphins off the Kona Coast of the Big Island but actually swim with them as well.
- It is for this reason that taking a 'dolphin swim Kona style' is so very popular on the Big Island.
How do you Swim with Dolphins on the Big Island? What is the process for the Dolphin Swim Kona?
- Most dolphin swim boats depart in the morning time as this is the best time to find the dolphins.
- You will meet your boat at the selected harbor and head out to sea.
- You will be given instructions about what to do and what not to do regarding swimming with the dolphins.
- The experienced boat captains know the habits of the dolphins and generally know where to find them. You will cruise to the location they are likely to frequent and jump into the water with your masks and snorkels and wait a short time for them to pass through your small group. After they have passed you may have additional opportunities to repeat the experience at other locations.
- The success rate of finding dolphins and then swimming with them here in the waters off of Kona are generally higher than 80%.
- Often you will be able to moor off additional locations where you will be able to concentrate on the rich reef and sea life found along the coastline.
Bottle Nose Dolphins
- Known for their inshore habits, playfulness around vessels and star performances at aquariums, Bottle Nose Dolphins are probably the most popular of all cetacean species.
- Adult Bottlenose Dolphins in the waters off the Big Island of Hawaii range in size from seven to eleven feet in length and weigh between 600 and 850 pounds. Their backs are medium gray, their sides are lighter gray and their bellies are white or pink. Offshore animals are darker in color than those found inshore and sometimes appear to be less interested in swimming along with boats. A few thousand Bottlenose Dolphins are believed to inhabit the waters around Hawaii, usually living in groups of two to fifteen individuals. Most of these groups are permanent residents of certain coastlines and harbors, and are therefore easy to spot.
Spinner Dolphins
- The Spinner Dolphins are the smallest of the dolphin varieties found on the Big Island and are generally between five and six feet in length and weigh 130 to 200 pounds. Hawaii has its own subspecies that is easy to recognize by its distinctive "three-tone" color pattern which consists of a sharply defined dark gray "cape" on their backs, a stripe of lighter gray on their sides and a white or pink belly.
- This species gets its name from its spectacular habit of leaping high into the air and spinning several times on their tails before falling back into the water. Researchers are not sure why the dolphins spin, but most people who have had the opportunity to watch these Big Island dolphins don't seem to mind, and find it a real treat.
- Hawaiian spinner dolphins congregate at night in large herds in the deep channels between the islands to feed. During the day, they break up into smaller groups and come near shore to rest and play. A particular place the dolphins of the Big Island can often be seen is Kealakekua Bay however dolphins can frequent the entire Kona Coast as well.
Dolphins are simply amazing. Here are some facts that are sure to interest you.
- The life cycle of dolphins is similar to that of other cetaceans. As mammals, dolphins bare live young and the mothers nurse them on milk and provide care.
- A dolphin calf is born tail-first with eyes open, senses alert and enough muscular coordination to follow its mother immediately.
- At birth, the mother helps her calf to the surface to get its first breath. While nursing lasts between one and a half to two years, the mother will remain with her calf for a period between three and eight years.
- There is some variation in the age at which sexual maturity is reached, the reproduction rate and the life expectancy among the different species of dolphins. Most species tend to bare one calf every other year or so during their active years of reproduction and are believed to have an average life expectancy of about thirty years.
- The Hawaiian name for dolphin is Nai'a, and refers to all species of dolphins found in Hawaiian waters.
- Four species of dolphins are regularly found in the waters around the Big Island of Hawaii. They are the Pacific Bottle Nose Dolphin, the Rough-Toothed Dolphin, the Spotted Dolphin and the Spinner Dolphin. Other dolphin species have been known to pass through the islands but are relatively rare.
- As anyone who has had the opportunity to watch dolphins perform in a show can attest, dolphins have an impressive ability to learn and imitate behaviors, often for what appears the sheer pleasure of doing so. This observation, together with their large brain size, has led to numerous studies of dolphin intelligence.
- Dolphins' brains are about the size of our own.
Pride of America Cruise Ship:
The swim with dolphins Big Island tours do not pick up at the Cruise Ship Dock. The majority of these dolphin swims however can be reached by a short taxi ride from the dock. These would be available to you on Wednesday morning from the port of Kona.
Checkout Tom's Tips and Insights about "The Big Island" of Hawaii Dolphin Tours
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Tom's Tips - Big Island Dolphin Swim
If you've come to the Big Island to see the wild dolphins, you've come to the right place. This is 'ground zero' for dolphin watching in Hawaii, This is the 'top of the line'. This is the 'holy grail'. The Kona Coast of the Big Island is a very special place that dolphins have come to live. Much of the evening hours they spend hunting in the deep waters off the coast but in the morning time they are 'chill'. Though they never fully fall asleep, they are definitely operating in a slower speed. They appear to be social and playful and at the same time very interested in their human visitors. And the amazing thing about the humans who come to visit is that they are 'respectful' too. Above all else they are both thankful for the opportunity to come visit these marvelous creatures in their normal environment but they have learned over the years to be so mindful as to not intrude on the secret life of the dolphins. If the dolphins come to play with the humans, it is because they want to. Perhaps the extreme sensitivities of these evolved species of dolphins have somehow rubbed off on the less evolved species of humans because they seem to connect here in the water off the Kona Coast as two elevated groups of beings who have been brought together through some type of cosmic inspiration. This may be unique on the planet because it does not seem to be the human's basic 'modus operandi' to interact with other animal species in a manner of 'live and let live'. But none the less, this phenomenon takes place on a daily basis of the coast of Kona. Boat captain humans bring tourist humans out to see and even swim with the dolphins and neither species encroaches upon the other. They enjoy each other with out talking or touching or feeding or acting aggressive or acting in any inappropriate way and when it is time, they simply part ways. The experience of these encounters with visitors of the human species is often a silent reverence which lingers with them for hours after the encounter. Meeting wild dolphins in the open ocean and swimming with them might just possibly infuse those humans with a greater sense of humanity. and this of course, is likely all orchestrated by the dolphins themselves. You should sign up for one of our dolphin tours. You just might see life in a different way.
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Video Transcript
Okay, so here's the scenario. You're coming to the Big Island and you want to see some dolphins. You have hit the jackpot. This is one of the best places in all of Hawaii and probably other places around the world too that you can actually get up close and see the dolphins, but more than that, in certain locations that we have on the Big Island, you can actually get in and swim with the wild dolphins. This is unbelievable. It's an experience that people they come away with, they are in awe of the experience. It is so amazing, and it happens so so often.
Let me show you the island here. The
coastline we're talking about having this happen on is the Kona coast. This is kind of where the majority of marine sightings and so on are for us on the Big Island. Things are a little bit rougher on the other side. This is, generally speaking, going to be an area that is a little bit calmer, a little bit more boat friendly, but what happens is, there's a number of boats that do this, but this is the scenario, the way it works.
You'll go out, usually in the
morning, leave from one of the harbors that we have here, and we'll go out in search of the dolphins. This is where the dolphins live, the spinner dolphins, the bottlenose dolphins. You're going to find them all along here. It is rare when we do not see the dolphins in this area. The captains are real familiar with where they can be found, and they'll cruise to the areas where they were last located and just try to get close to where we think that they're going to be.
But the way they do this that's pretty amazing, and the captains are pretty incredible that they can pull this off on a regular basis, and I'm talking really high percentage, like seeing dolphins well over 90% of the time. Of that amount of time actually being in the water swimming with them, about 75% of the time. So what actually happens is you're going to be going out. You're going to be getting in a place where the dolphins are kind of cruising down the coastline. The captains will figure this out. They know what's going on, and they'll put the boat in a place where they believe the dolphins are going to cruise through, and once they get positioned in that spot, they're going to have you as snorkelers just grab your
snorkel gear and jump out off board and just be there.
Now everything about seeing the dolphins is got to do with great reverence for them and respect, and it's not a matter of interfering with their lives. It's just not pono is the word that's used in Hawaiian. It's not the right thing to do, but the dolphins, if they have an interest, they can come over and they can hang out with you, and so it's a matter of that. When we get close enough to dolphins, we never try to touch them, never try to reach out or grab them, it's just really a matter of just observing them, and this has happened for many years, they obviously seem to appreciate the way we do things, and they do it time and time again. I think that they're very curious about people as well.
But in any event what's happening is you're all now in the ocean, you're sitting there assuming that maybe dolphins are going to show up on the horizon, and sure enough, what's going to happen is all of a sudden a pod of dolphins that are maybe, I don't know how many, the times that I've done it, I'm going to say 30, and they just all come where you're, as a group of snorkelers in the water, here they're coming and they're just all between all you guys, and they're just coming right through, and you're getting incredibly close. So close you can't even believe it. In many occasions, you got the small, the babies, you got the big ones, the mothers, all of them. They're coming through and they're just so cute and it's just such an amazing thing to see. The photographs you get, you won't even believe. So that'll happen. They'll cruise through.
Then you might want to get up and get on the boat again, the captain, get in the boat, and he'll cruise around, find another location, and actually have it happen again. The last time that I was on this, I think we probably did this exercise about five times, and got so close to the dolphins during this period of time, and got such incredible photographs, the photographs that you just saw before I put up the map was one that we took that day, but it is really a super experience that we have that really doesn't happen to any extent on any of the other islands. Can't make that kind of guarantee or probable guarantee of getting close to dolphins and actually swimming with them. On Oahu, we have a similar area that that can happen in, but other than that, it's just not going to be occurring.
The other thing that we always mention in relation to dolphins, because people that are interested in dolphins are also interested in seeing manta rays, we have that off the coast of Kona as well. That's something that'll happen in the evening time. A couple hours, you'll go out and they have big spotlights that they're drawn to, and you'll have these giant giant manta rays that'll come swimming by you as you're snorkeling at night. Really kind of surreal experience, something you're not going to experience in many places in the world. So that, including the dolphin trips, are really kind of an amazing thing that we have off the Kona side of the Big Island, and the dolphin trips are also often involved with the snorkeling as well, so you'll get some additional snorkeling to see the reefs and whatever else is involved. The dolphin trips on the Big Island. These are great.
So if you have any questions about tours or activities in Hawaii, just give us a call or check out TomBarefoot.com. We're here to help.
