Dolphin Cruises

By Joe Tennis
Features Writer / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: August 23, 2008

Virginia Aquarium Offers Scenic Summer Trips

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Easing out of Rudee Inlet, the “Rudee Flipper” sailed squarely in line with a parasail pilot.
All the rubbernecks aboard – myself included – cast eyes to the sun.
Here in Virginia Beach, it seems parasailing is latest, greatest attraction, just off the coast right along the edge of the ocean. But then, it seems so is sailing aboard a tiny ship on a 90-minute cruise, in search of the elusive dolphin.

DOLPHIN CRUISE
The Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach offers dolphin-watching trips through late September on the Rudee Flipper, a double-decker vessel that sports several seats and even a lounge serving ice cream and mixed drinks.
All year long, you can visit the aquarium to see sharks, stingrays and interactive displays. Attracting 600,000 visitors a year, the aquarium boasts tanks holding dozens of crabs and hundreds of fish.
But, of course, to get a real taste of the place they play, you must feel the sea spray.
And that’s where the dolphin cruise comes in.
Ken Scott, a Norfolk, Va., resident, has taken the boat ride seven times and has never gotten bored.
“And,” he said, “only once did we not see dolphins.”
Scott, the director of Norfolk International Airport, often takes his family for rides, including his grandchildren.
The leisurely afternoon means more than just scanning the shore between the waves, looking for fins.
These trips also offer a chance to marvel at the guts it must take to be on a parasail ride.
What’s more, you simply get to see the shore, soaking up all the ambiance of the towering hotels built facing the Virginia Beach Boardwalk.
Then, a couple miles beyond the King Neptune statue at the terminus of U.S. Highway 58/Laskin Road, the Rudee Flipper sails north along the same shoreline eyed by the Jamestown settlers in 1607.
The Jamestown settlers first landed somewhere in the vicinity of Cape Henry, at the northern end of Virginia Beach. And here, on a sunny summer day, that’s where the Rudee Flipper ultimately anchors for about a half-hour, in search of the playful Atlantic bottlenose dolphin.

COLLECTIVE COO
In sight of the two Cape Henry lighthouses, bobbing at sea about 600 yards from the sandy shoreline, about 50 people aboard the Rudee Flipper coo collectively.
“Ah!”
Standing with a microphone, Jenna Brown, a staff member at the Virginia Aquarium, points out how these dolphins rise out of the waves together.
“We pretty much always see dolphins,” said Brown, who has narrated these dolphin-watching trips for three summers.
Still, it usually takes going about eight miles along the shoreline to begin seeing some action in the waves, beyond the hotel district, Brown said.
“We have gone all the way around the corner, all the way into the [Chesapeake] Bay,” said Brown, who studied biology at Tampa’s University of South Florida.
There is no real way, Brown added, to predict exactly where the dolphins might be – near Cape Henry or closer to Rudee Inlet.
“We’ve been tracking [the dolphins] for 15 years,” Brown said. “And there is no pattern what these guys will do.”

IF YOU GO
What: Dolphin Watching Tours sponsored by the Virginia Aquarium
Where: Virginia Aquarium, 717 General Booth Blvd., Virginia Beach, Va. The boat tours leave the Virginia Beach Fishing Center at Rudee Inlet.
When: Daily through Sept. 1 (11 a.m., 2, 4 and 7 p.m.); Sept. 2-5 and Sept. 8-12 (2 and 4 p.m.); Sept. 6-7 and Sept. 13-14 (11 a.m., 2 and 4 p.m.); Sept. 15-19 and Sept. 22-26 (daily at 2 p.m.)
How much: $18 for adults (12 years and older) and $14 for children (ages 4-11)
Info: (757) 385-0300

UPCOMING
“Dolphin Days’ is being held on Sept. 13-14 at the Virginia Aquarium. Visitors can participate in demonstrations, games and activities testing knowledge of the bottlenose dolphins that call Virginia Beach their summer home.