It was a beautiful day and we were anchored in front of Grace Bay Beach. It was one of those days that they take the pictures for the tourist magazines. The water was clear and calm, the sun was shining and all of the beautiful people were on the beach. We had taken Moon out front so that Brian could clean the muck and grass growing on her hulls. I had jumped in the water a few times and was sunning/drying off on the front nets. All of a sudden I hear a big “whoosh ” and feel water being sprayed on me…what the heck? I look under me and I see a dolphin! Brian is in the water so the first thing I do is try to find him to let him know that the big gray thing swimming in the water with him is a dolphin, not a shark (we’ve seen a few of here) at the same time Brian swims to the front of the boat to see if I saw what he did…it was JoJo the dolphin! JoJo checked out Brian for a minute or two, face to face, to say hello and to see what he was doing. Apparently JoJo did not want to help clean the bottom of the boat and he decided instead to continue on with his swim moving down the beach.
We had read a few stories about JoJo but after being here for a few weeks we were starting to think that he was a fairy tale for the tourists. We had only seen two other dolphins since we’ve been here but just briefly. They say that JoJo solely lives in the Grace Bay area and has been here since 1985. Apparently he is a friendly dolphin and has been known to entertain tourists just because he wants to. He has had a few lady dolphins friends throughout the years and has had offspring with them but has remained in Grace Bay seemingly to prefer the company of humans to his own kind.
One thing that the Turks and Caicos have really promoted is that they are proud that they do not have any captive dolphins and are fighting to keep that those type of parks out of their country. They believe that dolphins should be as they are, wild and free. They do not promote any dolphin tours and are very protective of JoJo. This unique dolphin has brought the country international recognition and the government has given him a protected status. You can read more about JoJo at:
http://www.deanandjojostory.com/_content/meetJojo.htm
and many other websites.
(Google JoJo the dolphin)
It was a real treat to have JoJo stop by and say hello to us!
Very Cool!!!