On sandy earth, taking in Atlantic salt and the drift of motorboat diesel, she-oaks gather around white crosses resembling roadside shrines. The wooden cruciforms have names usually reserved for boats: Typhoon. Nail. Bed Breaker. Big Can. Snot-Stuck-In-Nose.
The markers line up in neat rows beneath tall placards. One sign says No Camping. The other says No Dumping of Rubbish. Between them is a printed aluminium board. It has photos of a dolphin coursing through dark waters. The sign says: Dolphin Caroba. We’ll Never Forget You.
At Praia da Tesoura, near the stony breakwaters that join the Santo Antônio Lagoon to the Atlantic Ocean, a memorial of the town’s dolphins stares at the people they once worked with.
Locals say that there are good dolphins and bad ones. The fishermen in Laguna divide the sea into good and bad, as they build memorials for both.
“A few of the dolphins that fish with humans sometimes steal from the nets,’’ Professor Paulo C. Simões-Lopes tells me.
A marine mammal biologist and retired professor at Brazil’s Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), he’s spent the last forty years watching fishermen and dolphins read each other in Laguna and Tramandaí.
“But it’s a forced dichotomy. Those that fish with humans are called good. Those that don’t, and who just pass through the channels, are called bad. “
The bottlenose dolphins stay in Laguna year-round.
But when migrating mullet crowd the estuary’s narrow mouth between April and July, the dolphins turn up like local regulars when the taps open.
“There are days outside the season when we still see them. They’re quite resident…but they can also travel enormous distances,” Paulo says.
Fishing with dolphins starts with breathing.
A fin comes up once. Then again. At first, the movements look ordinary. But dolphins, for all their aquatic grace, are still bound to the air above.
The fishermen watch where they appear.
“When they see that this breathing movement focuses in one place, the fishermen know something’s happening there,” says anthropologist Caetano Sordi, a former official at Iphan, Brazil’s federal heritage agency, who led the UFSC research behind the tradition’s national heritage recognition.
“The dolphins move in a circle. They surround the school,” he continues.
Like army cadets in tight formation, the fishermen line up in knee-deep water parallel to the shore and hold their sprung cast nets. They can’t see the mullet below. Yet they see the dolphins crowd the same patch of water.
Then one of the dolphins breaks from the circle.
“The animal herds the group of mullet,” Professor Paulo says. “Then it makes a rush towards the fishermen. It brakes against this rush and makes a signal above the surface. It’s the trigger.”
Locally, they call this move the pulo.
“It’s almost as if they’re saying, ‘They’re ready! Now!,’ ”
To decode these signals, it takes years. Dolphins jump for other reasons. They breathe, play and make a commotion at the surface. A novice fisherman could mistake these turns for the signal.
The experienced fishermen wait.
At the right movement, the circular net opens above the water. Its weighted rim strikes the surface and closes around part of the school.
Below, the remaining mullet explode in every direction.
That panic is the dolphins’ reward.
“When the net hits the water, the school breaks apart in flight, and several of those fish go into the dolphins’ mouths,” says Professor Paulo.
Sometimes the dolphin misses the fleeing fish.
Then the partner becomes a thief.
“They come in with their snouts, lift the net and steal fish right out of it.”
Among Laguna’s fishermen, that can leave a so-called good dolphin in a weird middle ground; they’re helpful enough to bring the fish, but sneaky enough to take one back.
But one thing’s certain: Laguna’s dolphins are loved. Deeply.
Long before she became an epitaph, Caroba got caught in one of those nets.
She was young. And so was the fisherman everyone called Pandorga.
The story survives through Pandorga’s son, who told it to Caetano. Caroba got caught in Pandorga’s tarrafa and dragged him through the water.
“The dolphin carried Pandorga along with her,” Caetano says. “He didn’t drown because the hat he wore…made a kind of mask underwater.”
Caroba pulled, and Pandorga followed.
Eventually, man, dolphin and net came apart.
According to the story, Caroba developed an affection for Pandorga.
And affection isn’t a word thrown about in the halls of academia.
Just ask Paulo.
When he first saw Caroba in 1987, she was an adult female, and already one of the most forceful dolphins on the fishing line.
“Biologists struggle not to anthropomorphise too much,” he says. “But it was tough because she was so strong-willed.”
Caroba didn’t wait around for her place among the other dolphins.
“She was so involved in the fishing that sometimes she drove other animals away from the line of fishermen,” Paulo says.
Caroba brought the men fish. But she also decided who else could join her.
Paulo’s eyes gleam as he remembers. Calves, four to six months old, swim with their mothers into the fishing grounds. They dart after fish wildly, confusing the mullet and new fisherfolk.
The older crowd would watch them from the shoreline.
“Oh look, here comes that dolphin, what’s-his-name… Natalino,” Paulo joked, imitating one of the fishermen. “He’s a pain in the neck and brings nothing.”
He likens young dolphins to children walking hand in hand with their parents; they bounce about, always threatening to break away at escape velocity.
Younger fishermen don’t have it any easier.
To Caetano, they’re just as eager to mistime the moment.
“Apprentices will see a dolphin jump simply because it’s having fun and he throws the cast net,” he says. “He can’t yet tell the movements.”
Eventually, the young ones, both above and below the water, study the masters.
And they learn.
“These aren’t just interactions. They’re not episodic. It’s a relationship,” Caetano continues “We’re talking about two cultural traditions that, in a certain respect, are one and the same. We’re talking about a hybrid community. “
Paulo tells me he’s studied this community long enough to see one of its marquee members disappear.
One day, Caroba travelled far up the Tubarão River. Too far, in fact. And she wouldn’t leave.
For days, researchers and fishermen tried to turn her back to Laguna.
They came in boats, made noise beneath the water and stretched barriers across the river.
Finally, they tried a net.
Caroba broke through.
Not wanting to stress her because of her advanced age, they paused the rescue.
Days later, Pedro Castilho called Paulo.
Caroba was still upriver and acting strangely.
“When I arrived, it looked almost like a catastrophe. There had been a violent flood, the riverbanks had been destroyed, and she was there.”
For twenty minutes, he watched Caroba.
Then she sank.
She never came back up.
Paulo and the others entered the water with boats and nets, trying to find her. Later, volunteer divers joined in the search.
Caroba’s body surfaced three days later.
At Praia da Tesoura, Caroba’s name remains among the white crosses.
Near the channel, fishermen still form their line in the shallows. Beyond them, dolphins still come up for air.
On both sides of the water, the young watch the old. Then they try.
