Spinner dolphins of the Arabian sea!

Captain Salim's sailing boat may have been named the Sperm Whale, but what he really knew about was dolphins. We were on a family holiday in Oman and the country's rugged coastline, studded with wrecks and reefs, is a haven for millions of fish, not to mention the Arabian Sea's most outrageous extrovert - the Spinner dolphin.

We'd spent days dragging our sweating kids round dusty towns and dustier forts - the dolphin trip dangling, carrot like, at the end of the week. After a few miles of zigzagging slowly across the turquoise waves, Captain Salim called us to the rail. There, like a silvery shadow, we saw a pointy streak. 'Is it a shark?' screamed our four-year-old. She'd already been nipped by a donkey, and the holiday was clearly going from bad to worse.

But then, to our right, a group of glistening show-offs jumped into the air, followed by dozens more. Soon there were close to 100 dolphins somersaulting across the warm waves. Their celebrations looking as if they'd all scored a World Cup winner. As we headed back to port, the captain smiled calmly at our youngest: 'She was right, you know, she did see a shark...'