Captain Khaled’s ringtone comprises a loud blast of Arabic music. He answers his phone, steering the boat with his left elbow on the wheel, his right hand resting on the throttles.
He changes course and heads in the direction of three small green and white fishing boats. As we near them, I realise the fishermen are not alone – they are either following, or being followed by (it’s hard to be sure) – a school of maybe 40 to 50 dolphins.
‘Many of these fishermen are my friends,’ says the captain, ‘we talk on the phone about where the dolphins are.’
Khaled was formerly a fisherman himself – and has the scars to prove it. His fingers bear the marks of many healed cuts and look as if their tips could have been squared off.
‘These…’ he flattens out his hands, ‘They’re cuts from fishing lines. And this…’ he indicates a paler line running across the upper portion of his left arm, ‘…This was a shark. Not a bite, though; a fin. We were fishing for tuna – pulling them in on a line – and then… the shark was there, too. His fin slashed my arm. One year off work.’
We tag along behind the school. The dolphins don’t seem fazed by our presence as they move rapidly through the water, one or other of their number occasionally rising clear of the waves with a seemingly exuberant leap.
After around 30 minutes Captain Khaled scans the horizon and does not like what he sees. He signals to the fishing boats. From his higher position he can see what they can’t – that there is a storm blowing in towards the coast. Then he turns for home and opens the throttles, speeding back to the brown mountains that define the coastline of Oman.
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