Most of those moments are never photographed.
On that morning in May 2023, Blacklow was watching carefully enough to notice movement inside an approaching wave.
Instead of simply admiring it, she reacted.
Seconds later, the opportunity was over.
That combination—nature's unpredictability and a photographer's readiness—is responsible for many memorable wildlife images.
The photographer cannot control the subject.
She can only prepare herself for the possibility that something remarkable might happen.
A Reminder of What Remains Unseen
Perhaps that is what makes the twelve-dolphin photograph so compelling.
For every extraordinary wildlife moment humans witness, countless others happen with nobody watching.
Dolphins ride waves when there are no cameras nearby.
Whales travel beneath empty horizons.
Birds perform elaborate courtship displays in remote landscapes.
Predators hunt.
Young animals play.
Pods travel together.
Most of these moments disappear as soon as they happen.
Photography occasionally gives us access to one of them.
Blacklow went to Manly Beach to photograph the surf.
She noticed movement in a wave.
She raised her camera.
And suddenly there weren't one or two dolphins in front of her.
There were twelve.
For a fleeting instant, they moved through the same wave in an extraordinary natural formation.
Then the wave passed.
The dolphins disappeared.
The ocean returned to what it had been moments earlier.
But the photograph remained.
A morning that could easily have become just another visit to the beach instead produced an image seen by people around the world.
Blacklow had hoped to capture dolphins in the surf.
What she captured was something much harder to plan for: twelve wild animals, one wave and a fraction of a second when everything seemed to fall perfectly into place.
Sources
The central details of Jessica Blacklow's May 2023 encounter—including the location at Manly Beach, the twelve dolphins and her account of how quickly the event unfolded—were reported by The Epoch Times and other contemporary news outlets.
Scientific background on bottlenose dolphin behavior, social organization, feeding and habitat comes from NOAA Fisheries. NOAA notes that bottlenose dolphins commonly form flexible social groups and exhibit behaviors including play, social contact and cooperative feeding.
NOAA's marine-mammal photo-identification research provides additional information about dolphin social relationships and how researchers use photographs to understand associations among individual dolphins.
Australia's Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water provides information on cetacean echolocation and social organization, including the observation that bottlenose dolphins can form groups of approximately five to fifteen animals, with larger groups occurring in open water.
Australian government information also documents bottlenose dolphins in New South Wales and other Australian waters.
A NOAA technical report notes that wild dolphins have been observed surfing beach-breaking waves, ocean swells, wind waves and pressure or bow waves associated with whales and boats.
NSW National Parks identifies dolphins among the marine wildlife found around Manly Harbour, while Destination NSW documents established bottlenose dolphin populations elsewhere along the New South Wales coast.