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The water was deep and I couldn’t see the bottom. As I looked into the vast Pacific Ocean, all I could see was the sun’s light beams streaming through. My heart was beating just a little too quickly, betraying my cool and collected rendition of ‘I’m Gonna Be’ by The Proclaimers that hummed out of my snorkel. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a silhouette gliding towards me. A dolphin. As she approached, she confidently looked into my eyes. Once she had caught my attention, she started dancing around me. In New Zealand, dolphin encounters happen daily. The Dusky dolphins, local to the Kaikoura Peninsula, are curious, social and friendly. As we got on the boat, our guide mentioned that the best way to capture the dolphin’s attention was by singing. As the dolphin started swimming, I followed, trying to maintain eye-contact. As the old saying goes, she was swimming circles around me. As we twirled together, she began to swim deeper. Caught up in our dance, I tried to follow. The seawater flooded my snorkel, reminding me that humans can’t breath underwater. I spluttered back to the surface. I must have seen over fifty Dusky dolphins that morning. They were inquisitive, and we spent over half an hour with the same pod, as they weaved in and out of our small group of sixteen. The dolphins were inquisitive, but in the same way a scientist is. From the first moment we met, I was being tested. I was their experimental animal, performing tricks when they asked me to. I wish I could say that I passed, but I think I failed every test. I was unable to freedive more than a few centimetres in my thick wetsuit. I was unable to spin as fast as they could. And let’s just say my rendition of ‘I’m Gonna Be’ was as good as the original. Dusky dolphins are not your poster-child dolphin. They are the smallest species of dolphin with a maximum length of 2.1 metres. They have a white under-belly, and a grey cloak covering them from their rounded beak to the tip of their tail. These markings, like meticulous make-up, highlight both their eyes and mouth. The most unusual characteristic is their cone-shaped beak, which looks as though they are giving you an ever so slight smirk the whole time. And with that smirk, they started to show us how it was done. Growing bored of their experiments, they started playing around with each other. I could finally relax, as I tried to think of a more calming song to sing to them. In my limited experience, being both agile and joyous makes for a glorious marine gymnast. The Dusky dolphins were 10-point scoring gold Olympic gymnasts. As they started to twist again, I started humming Chub Checker. Their acrobatic nature shone through as they performed tumbles, leaps and somersaults underwater and in the air. All the while, they continue to click and whistle, not breaking a sweat. As we clumsily got back onto the boat, we sipped tea and nibbled the ginger biscuits provided by the crew. We chatted and exchanged our test scores as we sailed back to shore. The crew told us that our experience was extremely rare, usually the dolphins do a quick swim-by and the groups are normally in and out of the water four or five times to keep up with them. As our boat started to speed away, the dolphins couldn’t resist one final moment to show off, offering a spectacular triple back twist somersaults in the whitecaps, as they swam into the distance. And in response, the humans started moving our raised flat palm from left to right, waving goodbye.