Fungi the Friendly Dolphin Charms Thousands of Dingle Bay Visitors

Boatloads of tourists have serenaded him with tin whistles, trumpets and flutes.

Once he leaped out of the water and knocked the pipe from a fisherman’s mouth. He has swum with the patients of a doctor trying to cure depressives.

He has starred on Japanese, German, American and Australian television and inspired an epic poem by a British writer.

Tens of thousands of people have traipsed to Dingle Bay in western Ireland to see Fungi the bottlenose dolphin leap for joy, and few of them are untouched by their encounter.

Divers swim alongside him and children shriek with delight when he pops up, grinning, to greet their sightseeing boats.

Poet Heathcote Williams rode on Fungi’s back and later wrote: “Your mind feels recharged by the nameless wildness of this creature.”

Fungi first appeared in Dingle Bay at the end of 1983, leaping up to greet fishermen bringing in their catches. The locals nicknamed him Fungi because of his beard.

But swimmers on the local beach at first fled in terror, mistaking him for a shark.

One fisherman, quoted in Irish journalist Sean Mannion’s recent book about Fungi, said: “On Monday mornings the fishermen sailing out might not be in the best of moods after having a few drinks at the weekend and a few late nights.

“The dolphin would often shoot up and give them the shock of their lives, and then he’d start jumping all over the place, full of the joys of spring. A lot of bad language went after him on those mornings.”

Often his curiosity would bring him too close to the propeller blades. Crisscross scars on his back show the result.

He captured local hearts in 1986 when he appeared in the harbor at the time of the annual blessing of the boats by the local Roman Catholic priest. Locals saw it as a good omen.

Today, sightseeing boats chug out to see him, divers on the local beach wrestle into wet suits for a closer encounter, and the town is awash in Fungi T-shirts, hats and posters.

He is not the first dolphin to capture the public imagination. In New Zealand, Pelorus Jack used to guide ships through the Cook Straits back in the 1890s and was immortalized in prose by Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain.

In France, Jean Louis the friendly dolphin became a Brittany star.