Thank you.
One, two, three, four.
There's a couple more coming over there.
Look, that one's got another one.
That one's got another one.
That one's got another one right there.
Another one.
Any chance that that could be Dee Dee?
Look at him.
Look at him.
Look at him.
Look at him.
Look at him.
Look at him.
Look at him.
Look at him.
There's one that's missing.
It's caught up there, see?
Look at him.
That one was definitely Dee Dee.
Now we had two others.
With their...
the chopped dorsal and the chopped sexual.
Since humans first left the land
and traveled the seas, we've been
bewitched by the sight of dolphins.
Their sleek forms, their grace,
their spirit of playfulness have fired
our imaginations.
They have led us to feel that life
may be better in the oceans.
In marine parks, we've learned
that they are natural athletes
and eager students.
Here, many people have met and come to love
these creatures of the open seas.
But in captive dolphins,
we have only glimpsed a shadow
of their sacred lives.
Researchers in the 1950s discovered
that dolphins have brains as large
and as complex as humans.
They've had their brains for almost
30 million years,
60 times longer than we've had ours.
Dolphins perceive the world
through sound, and they use sound
in their sophisticated communication.
Hardy Jones has sought to learn more
about the lives of wild dolphins.
He has explored the seas for 25 years
and has worked to preserve the oceans
and their creatures.
At the same time I learned about
the dolphin's large brain and its
fascinating ability to communicate,
I also learned that thousands of dolphins
around the world were being slaughtered
by human beings.
And this is what led me to want to go out
into the open sea and study dolphins
in their own environment.
Julia Witte has spent years in the field
with birds, whales, and dolphins.
She studies and photographs
their behavior in the wild.
I was hoping we'd find a school
of wild dolphins we could swim with
and follow their progress over time.
I hoped we might learn some answers
about the mysterious lives of wild dolphins.
Together, Hardy and Julia set out
to find a school of wild dolphins
they can study and film.
The task is not an easy one.
Dolphins seek out boats and ride their bow waves,
but most are afraid of people in the water.
Ancient myths tell of swimming with wild dolphins,
but that is almost unknown in modern times.
We know that there are 32 species
of dolphins and porpoises worldwide.
Each kind is a specialist,
using the oceans in unique ways.
Dolphin species vary widely.
Some are lovers of cold waters.
Others, tropical.
They live in every ocean of the world
and in some rivers and lakes.
Like us, most dolphins are highly social,
depending on one another for survival.
The ancestors of dolphins and whales
did a reverse evolution,
leaving the land 50 million years ago
to take up life in the water.
The seas offered an abundant diet
and few natural enemies,
but maybe they were enticed back
by the beauty and weightlessness
of the ocean world.
Perhaps in this different universe,
they learned to use their large brains
in ways we've not even imagined.
Hardy has learned of a remarkable school
of friendly dolphins in the Bahamas.
A treasure diver named Bob Marks
has been swimming with them for the past 20 years.
He set out to look for these Atlantic spotted dolphins,
a species about which little is known.
Bob Gascoigne is skipper
of the Sir Clousley Shovel,
a schoonery built himself.
Bob has spent years sailing
and diving the Caribbean.
Howard Hall joins them aboard.
He brings extensive experience
in underwater cinematography.
Steve Gagne is a musician
and acoustical expert
who will work on recording the dolphins' sounds.
Somewhere on these shallow banks
are the dolphins Bob Marks talked about,
a special group of spotted dolphins
who are friendly to people in the water.
Perhaps because of their secluded home,
they don't fear humans.
But can Hardy and Julia find this school of dolphins
in the vastness of the ocean?
Dolphins! Over there!
These are spotted dolphins, alright.
As the boat comes to a halt,
the dolphins show no sign of disappearing.
But will they allow people
to approach them underwater?
Okay, let it go.
At first, the dolphins raced past,
buzzing me wildly with their sonar
and staring at me with wide eyes.
It was an incredible experience,
floating there in that weightless world
with these sleek creatures flashing past.
Each time the dolphins would head off,
I'd try to think of something to bring them back.
But they obviously have a mind of their own
and do exactly what they please.
Finally, they lost interest altogether
and drifted off into their blue world.
It absolutely couldn't be better if I'd dreamt about it.
But as quickly as they appear,
the dolphins drift back into their ocean wilderness.
There is not a dolphin in sight.
Their world is a desert of water,
a place of shifting sands and sudden storms,
a place without borders or landmarks,
a world with dimensions we do not really understand.
Here and there, the sand is punctuated by visitors.
Stingrays fly gently across the sands,
feeding on buried shellfish.
Like desert dwellers, they have learned to utilize
the scarce resources of the banks.
Fish called jacks follow the rays' wanderings,
feeding on leftovers.
On the edges of the banks, the sand tapers downward.
In the deeper water, outcroppings of coral appear.
Life explodes in the oases of these barrier reefs.
On the far edges of the reefs,
the floor of the sea falls suddenly away.
Steep walls plunge thousands of feet down into the darkness.
Here, the Gulf Stream has carved a vast ocean riverbed,
thousands of times larger than the Grand Canyon.
The ancient cities of coral, sweeping depths and currents,
are part of a different universe here on Earth.
For the dolphins, the beauty and challenge of this kingdom is home.
Attempting to attract the dolphins back to the boat,
Steve plays music through a speaker in the water.
Knowing that dolphins rely on sound more than we do,
he hopes the music will interest them.
Within moments, the dolphins come racing to the clouds,
fascinated by the sounds that fill their world.
But after a few days, they appear less often for the concert,
and soon Steve can no longer rely on the music to bring them in.
Life aboard begins to center on the dolphins' unpredictable visits.
Without them, the days seem long, hot, and empty.
The cool of a rain squall becomes the highlight of the day.
Bob discovers that the dolphins will charge the dinghy
the moment the motor starts.
The motorboat seems to excite their natural sense of sport,
and they love to race against it.
Eventually, the dolphins learn to station themselves in front of the dinghy,
ready to bow-ride.
Captain Bob is only too glad to oblige,
but after a while it occurs to him that the dolphins have trained him
to run the boat for them.
As time goes by, the dolphins come to call often on the boat.
Their visits provide the basis for unique observations.
I'd gone out to meet these dolphins,
expecting to just sit quietly in the water with my slate
and record what they were doing.
I had no idea they were never going to stick around if I did that.
Instead, we made a change and became part of the action.
And when we did that, we really began to see these dolphins for the first time.
Some dolphins become familiar visitors.
One female is particularly curious.
She carries a suckerfish or remora alongside.
She repeatedly gives off bubbles and a whistle from her blowhole.
This signature whistle is used by dolphins to identify themselves.
They name her Dee Dee after the sound of her whistle.
Her baby is called Chopper because of his scarred dorsal fin.
In addition to the underwater observations,
Steve records the dolphin sounds
and photographs of individual dolphins are taken for identification.
Hardy discovers another action that interests the dolphins.
He removes his fin in front of Dee Dee.
When I dropped my fin, I thought,
I wonder if the dolphins will think this is part of my body that I'm taking off.
And of course, the dolphin sonar will tell them very quickly
that the rubber of my fin is not the same as my body.
First of all, they used their sonar, which was very loud and very intense.
Then they'd move up close beside it in order to view it with their eyes.
They thought it was toy time or something.
I was trying to use it as a bridge to see if I could get them to come to the fin
and then come further.
That was funny, wasn't it?
I couldn't believe it.
They'd come and stick their nose right on it, kind of rub up against them.
They touched the fins.
They were all afraid to touch us, but that was...
They would let me get within a quarter of an inch.
I couldn't believe I wasn't touching them.
I could see my fingers on the body, but I could feel nothing.
That's our clothes.
By the end of that first year, we all felt we'd begun something.
We'd met Dee Dee and Chopper,
and we'd begun to see some other members of the school.
We'd learned a little bit about the world they live in,
and we'd learned what interested them about us.
But when it came time to leave that first year,
I really only felt this was a beginning.
Not all dolphins have as happy a relationship with people as those in the Bahamas.
Throughout the world each year, humans kill tens of thousands of dolphins for food.
In Japan, local fisheries have been decimated by overfishing and pollution.
But fishermen blame dolphins who they think eat too many fish.
Each year they round up and slaughter hundreds of them.
United States fishermen drown some 20,000 dolphins in their tuna nets each year.
They've been required by law to reduce this kill to zero.
But the killing continues, and entire families of spotted dolphins still die in their nets.
Dolphins form an important link in the delicate balance of the oceans.
Our slaughter of them may do more harm than we think.
But just as important, many people are beginning to see dolphins as individuals
with a right to life in the seas.
During the months away from the Bahamas, studying the film log proves invaluable.
More identifications are made, and behaviors are observed closely on film.
For the sake of their studies, it will be important to locate the same dolphins again
and follow their progress over time, but on a more personal level.
They hope to see Dee Dee and Little Chopper and renew their special friendship.
She was the one that came out of the whole pack.
The 100-foot tropic bird is chartered to house new equipment
and to act as a research station at sea.
On this return expedition, Steve brings two new acoustical inventions,
an underwater tape recorder.
The first of its kind will record the sounds the dolphins make in synchronization with a movie film,
and a computer-driven synthesizer.
It'll make a variety of dolphin-like whistles.
The tropic bird sets out for the dolphins' home under heavy skies and distant thunderstorms,
but there's no predicting if the same dolphins will still be there.
They could be ocean nomads forever wandering to new locations.
One, two, three, four. There's a couple more coming over there.
Is there any chance that that could be Dee Dee?
There's one that's missing a part of its caudal fin.
Okay, look, let's shut the boat down. Shut it down. Shut it down.
We'll get in the water, get Steve, and we'll get some sound.
Thank you.
Immediately, one dolphin came out of the pack, raced in towards me, sonar-ing wildly.
It gave all the impressions of the Dee Dee we'd come to know the year before.
This dolphin also had a remora attached to its side,
but I couldn't really believe the remora had stayed on Dee Dee's side for an entire year.
I thought that I could tell if this dolphin was definitely Dee Dee by dropping my fin again.
And sure enough, the dolphin came in, swirled around it, sonar-ing it,
looking at it just as Dee Dee had done the year before.
And it had a remora, so I was certain this was Dee Dee.
One of them was definitely Dee Dee.
And we had two others with the chopped dorsal and the chopped pectoral.
That's the clearest I'm sure that that was that group from last year.
Do I definitely recognize the one with the chopped off dorsal fin?
Yes, that's the chopped off pectoral who was swimming with Dee Dee all the time last year.
You saw that also? Yes.
I saw that patty with the left pectoral that used to swim with Dee Dee.
And then there's this other animal who looks exactly like Dee Dee.
That was the one that came right into my face, just right in that close from when we were at the beginning.
They did that same circling that they did last year.
It hardly stands to reason that animal still has the same remora that it had last year.
Maybe she's got a pet. Could be.
The tropic bird starts up and tries to pick up the rest of the dolphin school.
In the course of evolution, dolphins' nostrils have migrated to the top of their heads.
Although their lungs are smaller than ours, they have evolved an efficient method of breathing.
We use one-tenth of our lung capacity with each breath.
Dolphins completely fill their lungs each time they breathe.
They also store extra oxygen in their muscles.
These adaptations allow them to dive underwater longer than we can.
Dolphins are very fast swimmers, faster than scientists thought possible.
We now know that they can gain speed in two ways.
They leap into the air and escape the drag of water.
And their skin actually ripples and sloughs off, reducing friction underwater.
Identification of individual dolphins can be made from the bow.
Another dolphin from the previous year is recognized.
She's named Stubby because of the tissue loss on her flu.
For many years, people thought bow-riding dolphins were swimming fast to stay ahead of the boat.
Today we know they actually enjoy a free push from the pressure wave.
Dolphins probably first learned to ride the pressure waves of traveling whales,
and only later learned to do it with boats.
Didi has gotten darker since last year, which is darker and maybe slightly larger than last year.
Well, last year she was running with some larger animals.
This year she seems like the leader of a smaller group.
The one that had the pectoral completely missing was traveling with two very juvenile animals.
Remember, we'd sear off the bow.
So it was the one that was cut off more or less at the knuckle then.
It was with Didi last year.
The gathering of information about the dolphin school begins to pay off.
New discoveries are made about the lives of wild-spotted dolphins.
The bonds between individuals seem to be strong and long-lasting.
In many ways, their families are like ours.
They love and cherish their children and maintain a lifelong contact with them.
The oldest dolphins are the most heavily spotted ones,
and the babies are born without any spots.
You can age dolphins by how many spots they have,
and we've learned that there are subgroups within this school.
One subgroup is the adolescents or the teenagers,
and four of these who travel together a lot we call the gang of four.
The teenagers are a really rambunctious group,
and they're always tackling one another underwater.
Another subgroup is the nursery made up of the mothers and calves.
Dolphin babies are born very adept,
but despite their mother's caution,
they're always trying to race over and play with us.
Another subgroup is named the heavies for their large size,
heavy spotting pattern, and somber behavior.
These are the largest of the dolphins and probably the most experienced individuals.
They may scout danger for the rest of the school.
We enjoy seeing the heavies even though they don't come by very often,
and when they do, they tend to be a lot more removed than the rest of the group.
We often wondered what it would take to really get to know the heavies.
Dee Dee's oldest known child is Chopper,
who has grown from a newborn to a rather rambunctious adolescent.
Chopper is much like his mother, friendly and open.
Dee Dee's youngest child is named One Spot for his one prominent spot.
Ragged is named for the tissue loss in his pectoral fin.
Since his mother's disappearance, he has traveled with Dee Dee.
Dee Dee's remora is with her year after year.
It rarely attaches to her body, but instead slides fluidly over her skin.
No one knows what Dee Dee thinks of this hitchhiker,
but it does not appear to bother her.
Dee Dee is by far the friendliest of all the dolphins
and has gained a reputation as a camera hog,
racing over as soon as the film begins to roll.
She and her adventurous children have taught us much about dolphin family life.
Stephen Howard discussed their strategy
for recording the sound and picture of dolphins underwater.
...or it will divide it down into lower frequencies
so that sounds that are above our hearing range will be put directly on the tape.
So we'll be able to hear things that the human ear just can't hear, right?
Right.
Okay, now where do I get a sync cue from this?
Is there some light or something that comes out?
Yeah, if I hit this here, that'll give you a flash.
Can you see that?
Okay.
You'll be able to see that underwater?
Yeah, it should be.
At the same time, it puts a tone on the tape
so the tape and the camera will line up later in the editing.
We're off there. Goodbye, folks.
Dolphins, like bats, can see the world through sound.
They project a beam of high-frequency clicks called echolocation at an object.
The dolphins read the reflected clicks the way we read reflected light.
Their sonar is similar to the kind used by submarines to navigate underwater.
The dolphins make this sonar by air movement inside their heads.
The clicks do not come out of their blowholes or mouths
but are somehow projected through their skulls.
The other sounds dolphins make, the whistles, are believed to be used as communication
and may be a kind of language.
This is the first time film and sound of wild dolphins will be made together.
Because both the camera and sound can record in slow motion,
many of the dolphins' high-frequency vocalizations we don't hear
will now be brought into range.
Dee Dee brings Chopper and Stubby over
and together they use their special acoustical abilities to see the ball.
Their sounds here are slowed down eight times.
These sounds are slowed down 16 times.
The dolphin sonar tells them different things about the world and our sense of sight.
Sonar enables them to see inside the bodies of all living things.
They may watch the flow of blood through veins and the heart beating.
Emotions cause physical changes and dolphins may read the emotional state of their companions.
They may know more about each other in a matter of seconds
than we communicate in hours of talk.
Steve's dolphin call generator is a small computer
that will make whistles based on the dolphin's own sounds.
The team is not trying to say anything meaningful in dolphinese,
but they hope the dolphins will recognize their mimicry as an attempt to communicate.
The gap between dolphins and humans is wider than just language.
We are familiar with facial and body expressions,
but the dolphins' Buddha-like smiles and streamlined bodies
tell us nothing about their frame of mind.
In so many ways, they are inhabitants of another universe.
OK, I'm clear.
Can you hear me, Hardy? Hardy? Can you hear me? OK.
They're about a hundred yards out from the starboard side of the boat right now.
Yeah, they're moving this way.
Who's there?
It looks like the heavies, mostly the heavies at this point.
There's four of them. Can you see them?
They're getting into about your range now.
I must say, I really had serious doubts whether the whole thing would work at all.
I was fairly sure the dolphins would be curious about the noise,
but I was very hopeful of getting something beyond that.
We went down on the bottom and began to make calls with the generator.
Then one call, it was number seven, sent all the dolphins scattering.
I made a note not to use call number seven again.
I finally realized that call number three was the one they were most attracted to.
As I continued to make that, one of the dolphins, and it turned out to be Jagged,
began to sink tail down from the surface.
Immediately after I would make a call, I could hear Jagged exactly imitate the same sound I'd just made.
He was mimicking it back to me.
At one point, he swam over to Howard, who was lying down on the sand filming.
Jagged very slowly and very deliberately settled his body down onto the sand
so that he too was lying on the sand in front of Howard.
Then he swam over to Steve and me and again, with a great deal of effort and intention,
moved his body into a vertical position so that his flukes were on the sand
and he was standing in front of Steve and me.
Something seemed to click.
I think we both at that same instant knew in some primitive way we were having a conversation.
In the following days, the dolphin call generator arouses the interest of many dolphins.
More arrive to investigate and interact with the computer whistles.
The dolphins were tremendously excited.
Instead of one dolphin mimicking the sounds the box was making, there were several.
At one point, I realized that as I would make a sound,
the dolphins would duplicate exactly that sound and then come back with some kind of modification.
They would make the sound and then they would add something else to it.
And I had only the box with the pre-programmed sound in it.
I couldn't really do what the dolphins seemed to want to do.
Every time you put out a new call, it would bring out fresh interest.
If you plug a new call in and put up a new number, they would sonar and whistle it
and then they would start whistling that call. They would start responding to that call.
I was going with the machine, let's say, and I'd do that maybe once or twice
and then the dolphins would go, and they'd add something to it.
And there I was, stuck like a dummy with only being able to push the box back
and I felt like I wanted to generate something new on top of what they did
because it was clearly an interaction.
I can just as easily imagine that the dolphins are still questioning
whether we're intelligent or not based on our inability to respond to them.
After the dolphin called generator, the heavies began to come by for the first time.
It was pretty obvious something had changed.
Maybe they finally realized we were something to get excited about.
But whatever it was, we welcomed their interest
and we really took the opportunity to get to know them.
And as time went by, we realized that these were actually some of the friendliest members of the dolphin school.
Music
Music
I realized that we must be like visitors from outer space for these dolphins.
I've often wondered where they think we come from.
But despite this complete otherworldliness that we have,
they've always treated us just gently and tolerantly.
I touched them. They finally let me touch them.
They're all around me.
As Julia moves away, she skims over the surface,
moving rapidly but not kicking her flippers.
She's being pulled along in the wake of the dolphins.
If she had allowed it, they would have taken her home with them.
On another expedition aboard Cloudsley Shovel,
they run a grid pattern over the banks with dolphins on the bow.
The dolphins drop off at the same places on each run,
indicating a home range of some 40 square miles of ocean.
They dropped off at exactly the same point again.
What stops them from crossing outside of their territory?
So far, the answer has not been revealed.
The dolphins are rarely seen in the deep water on the edges of the banks.
Perhaps they're more vulnerable to shark attacks there.
Dolphins have always sensed the presence of sharks before the divers do.
When sharks do appear, the dolphins signal one another
with specific whistles and with tail slaps.
They then group tightly together, sink to the bottom, and drift away.
Almost every year, the dolphins' home is swept by hurricanes.
The dolphins happily surf the growing waves.
But the treacherous waters have caused the death of many ships
and have kept this dolphin school remote from people.
During the night storm, the ship's anchor drags across the banks.
In the crystal clear morning, a scattered shipwreck is revealed.
Like an oasis in the desert, the wreck attracts all kinds of marine life
for hunting, grazing, and protection.
The death of a ship means new life for the banks.
Corals, sponges, and tropical fish have taken up residence in its skeleton.
Wolf packs of barracuda hover nearby.
Their slender bodies allow great speed in pursuing their prey.
They are curious fish and will often accompany divers in the water.
Before long, the dolphins appear, cruising through the wreck
and interacting with the inhabitants.
They mercilessly tease the residents' stingrays.
Dolphins charge through the jacks around the wreck,
breaking up the schools and nipping at their tails.
Then an important discovery is made.
The dolphins seem to be using more than just their bodies to scatter
and herd the jacks.
They are emitting very loud blasts of echolocation at them as well.
Scientists have theorized that the dolphin sonar could be capable of stunning fish,
similar to the way high-frequency sounds can shatter glass.
But this has never been observed until now.
The dolphins are also seen using sonar in an orderly fashion
to search for and stun small fish and other animals beneath the sand.
They plunge their noses into the sand and pull out small sea cucumbers,
which they then eat.
When one dolphin gets food, the others playfully chase after.
One persistent barracuda becomes the focus of the heaviest sonar weapons.
As they blast the fish, it freezes in the water.
When the dolphins let up, the cuda bolts away.
But a large part of the dolphin's day is simply spent in play with one another.
Play is an important part of life for dolphins and humans.
It strengthens the bonds between individuals
and allows for exploration and experimentation.
As the years go by, the dolphins become more willing to let the divers join in their games.
Hardy removes his t-shirt, and the dolphins start a game of tag with it.
Dee Dee passes the shirt to Julia, who joins in.
When Jagged shows up, he takes the shirt and in his stiff fashion joins the game too.
But perhaps he doesn't know the rules, because before long he disappears with the shirt,
which is never seen again.
Later, Julia brings a small plastic wind-up fish into the water.
As it moves along, its tail makes a clicking sound, something like dolphin echo location.
It was like Christmas time underwater when I brought this fish in.
Dee Dee immediately became interested.
And she'd come right over and hold it right up next to her eye to look at it.
And then she'd use her sonar to examine it even more closely.
And as the day wore on, I realized she was using prey-stunning intensity sonar to try and stun this little fish.
And I could practically see confusion on her face that it wasn't working.
Finally, her frustration built to the point where she'd hold the little fish right on the tip of her nose
and emit huge blasts of sonar at it.
As I watched Dee Dee and Julia playing, I marveled at the close and trusting relationship between creatures of such different worlds.
Then a playful look came into Dee Dee's eye.
She swam down to the bottom and dug out a sea cucumber, one of her favorite delicacies.
She brought it over to us, her offering from the sea, a gift from one friend to another.
During our years in the Bahamas, we have lived for the first time among free dolphins.
This has allowed us to penetrate the world of these marvelous creatures in a small way.
And that glimpse of their universe has allowed us to see that the world we share is far more complex than we once believed.
We have seen the dolphins' social and family relationships over many years
and seen the affection and friendship they have among themselves.
But what is more astonishing is that they seem willing to share some of those feelings with us.
In our research, we've been able to learn about their phenomenal sonar capabilities
and identify more than 70 individuals, as well as observe their social and family relationships.
But what really moves me is knowing there is a remote place I can go
and find Dee Dee, Chopper, and Stubby bounding over the waves to greet me.
music
music
music
music