Photo : Lucy Pringle

A short story
(...a part of the story, from the unpublished book, dedicated to Mrs. Ioanna Golfinopoulou)


(It's February, 2002. I have "seen", felt the dolphins but I've never been close to them to see what's going on. One day, Kostas read on the newspaper that a whale appeared in Corinthiakos...)

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It was on a beautiful day in mid-March 2002 that we departed from the lake Vouliagmeni, Loutraki, with the inflated DELFIS on a quest...

Kostas: This trip will probably have a lot of surprises.
Nikos: How come you say that?

Kostas: The publication talks about the whale in Corinthiakos but Corinthiakos starts from here (lake Vouliagmeni-Loutraki) and spreads up until Patras...

Nikos: Οk, but Ioanna sensed something, and particularly, when I told her that you read on the newspaper about the whale of Corinthiakos, she told me: "Why don't you go see what's going on?" With a happy puzzlement I answered her: "But what would it be like to be next to a whale?" and "how are we gonna find her"? "No matter what, she won't ring on your home's bell", said Ioanna laughing.

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Kostas, my brother and friend, has already prepared the special microphones (hydrophones), so that he records the whale's sounds under the sea surface, while I was already equiped with lots of films and had my camera in readiness.

Kostas: It's too quiet, isn't it?
Nikos: Yes, it is.
Kostas: I will lie down for a little while. I stayed up all night to perfect the microphones. When and if you see something, wake me up.
Nikos: Ok.

My eyes were sinking in the deep blue of the sea and the reality was tangled up with the fantastic side of the pictures on my mind, willing to see something, waiting for something to happen.

Nikos: Kosta, wake up! Over there, in a two miles distance, d o l p h i n s........

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Kostas: Niko, could they be sharks?
Nikos: So many together? It can't be, but despite that, I see very well, they are dolphins. Come on, let's go, take the wheel! When we come closer, speed down and move parallel to them. I saw on the internet that they are the ones to choose if they want to come next to us. I'll go get my camera on.

Oh my God, how can I describe this moment? More than 100 dolphins were swimming next to us and neared us slowly, passing under the inflated and jumping in the air. Angele, Kyriako, Dimitra, Eleutheria, we began naming them in a second. Our eyes were filled with tears, while the camera's clicks were mingling with the dolphin's clicks, forming a magical picture with free sounds on the blue meadow of the sea.

After a little while, they retired, and while seeing them from a distance, Kostas prepared the recording system.
We neared them and played with them again. We had to be still, in order to record them. So we did. I turned off the engine, he threw the hydrophone in the sea and at that this very moment we got our second joy in a day - the system was working and we were listening to the voices of the...Angels of the sea.
While still and surprised, we have seen some twenty dolphins coming closer and beginning a serene choreography all around the inflated.

Three days later, I had the results of my first pictures with the dolphins of Corinthiakos.

Having the valuable material with me, I was in the waiting-room of Ioanna's office, full of joy and proud of my achievement.
Ioanna: Now you've seen how things work. Don't be afraid and prepare the photo exhibition...

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In 2005, I did my first photo exhibition in Athens.
In 2006, I did my second one in Thessaloniki and the third in Kavala.
In 2008, I got the professionnal boat ANGELOS...