Dolphins

Sometimes I dream that I'm swimming with dolphins

When suddenly I'm seeing through their eyes...

...Perceiving things I've never been aware of.

We're swimming through a shining sea of light...

...Yet there is a sense of danger,

Lurking off the in darkness beyond.

And in the logic of my dream,

Only ohe light can save us.

Dolphins swam these waters millions of years before we were here.

Like us, they're mammmals

And yet, they're completely at home in the sea.

...There are over forty species of dolphins,

Which have adapted to every sea on Earth, and many of her great rivers.

The Slim Spinner dolphins revel in the warm waters of hawaii.

The Stout Duskies swim

The frigid waters of Argentina and New Zealand.

The pink and long-beaked Amazon river dolphin

Has lived in fresh water for 15 million years.

The Bottlenose seems to be one of the most intelligent dolphins...

...And therefore one of the easiest to train.

Of course... no other animal their size has such a large and well developed brain.

Not even your favorite dog.

Lulu and Charlie are kept in pens,

But they're taken out into open water every day.

And if they understand the trainer's signals and perform impeccably,

They get to kiss a mutt named Sloppy Joe.

We can't measure an animal's IQ,

But tests show that dolphins are the smartest animals on earth

Or close to it.

Here, the dolphin must choose the correct symbols and reject all the rest.

This dolphin batted a thousand

27 correct answers in a row.

One of the cleverest dolphins - The Orca -

Is also the largest.

When they flip their fiveton bodies

High in the air with the greatest of ease,

It kind of makes you wonder

How do dolphins do that?

Dolphins defy the laws of physics;

...They shouldn't be able to leap as high and swim as fast as they do.

Terrie Williams studies dolphin physiology.

we measure Primo's oxygen consumption

While he pushes against the load cell.

He uses very little oxygen to generate tremendous power.

Primo breathes the same air you and I do

He's just better at it.

When he surfaces to breathe,

The extended air rushes out at 100 Miles per hour.

He can stay underwater for eight minutes, diving to a depth of five hundred feet.

The dolphin, perhaps the most efficient swimmer in the ocean,

Swims five times faster than even the speediest human.

What's their secret?

Terrie is testing the dolphins tail to see if is spring-loaded,

Like a kangaroo's legs.

An anatomical spring could give the dolphins

The speed and endurance to outswim all the other ocean creatures.

And make it look easy.

Their unrivalled intelligence and strength

Make dolphins so well adapted to their environment

That their basic anatomy hasn't changed much in over five million years.

All that time, the dolphins's main predator has been the shark.

But now dolphins face a new and even deadlier threat...

...us.

A man named Sam La Budde

Risked his life to shoot a very disturbing video aboard a tuna boat.

At that time, millions of dolphins were dying in tuna nets.

Public outrage reduced the slaughter,

But not before two thirds of the dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific were killed.

Thousands of dolphins are still dying every day in fishing nets around the world.

Today, an even greater threat from us is pollution,

Which makes dolphins increasingly vulnerable to disease...

But people can help.

In Florida, two very sick dolphins were rescued

And nicknamed Hercules and Holly.

Some very dedicated people will spend months caring for them,

While they're being studied by doctor Randy Wells.

Pneumonia and infections weakened Holly and Hercules,

But didn't diminish their strong bond with one another.

Even when they were separated for a medical exam,

They were constantly calling out to each other, like lovers or good friends.

This is an alien world to them.

The exam lasted almost an hour,

Yet Hercules never stopped calling out to Holly.

Both dolphins have good function of their lungs now,

and they're eating very well.

We have great hopes for the prospects

of being able to release them within the next few weeks.

Scientists like Randy Wells

are trying to help dolphins survive by learning more about them.

We can't protect what we don't understand.

In Hawaii, Dr. Lou Herman studies dolphin intelligence.

His research shows that dolphins are quick to understand

and respond to a complex language of gestures.

Not even chimpanzees read sign language so well.

Kathleen Dudzinski studies how wild dolphins communicate.

This is a special treat for me.

In the wild, I never touch dolphins.

But these trained dolphins are used to human touch.

Dolphins have a knack for playing games...

...and often invent new ones.

More amazing, when told to create their own jump,

they confer with one another underwater, communicating, planning and inventing...

...before performing a brand new leap.

There's no doubt dolphins are intelligent and creative.

But do they feel emotions, like grief? Or joy?

Can they make friends with one of us?

In the British West Indies, a wild bottlenose dolphin named JoJo

has developed a highly unusual bond of friendship with a man.

JoJo belongs to no dolphin family or social group.

He is one of the very few dolphins in the world who seeks out human contact,

especially his pal, a naturalist named Dean Bernal.

Years ago, when tourists swam into JoJo's feeding grounds

and tried to touch and harrass him, he would bite their hands in self defense.

A resort owner tried to get him put in captivity.

Dean Bernal intervened and was appointed JoJo's official warden.

It took months to build Jojo's trust.

Each day he swam a little closer.

But finally we became good friends.

We've been meeting at Sunfish Reef every day for fifteen years.

JoJo finds his favorite toy fish an endless source of fascination.

JoJo and I spend a lot of time exploring his world.

A nearby resort runs boats through the dolphins' feeding grounds,

injuring several dolphins badly, including JoJo.

One dolphin was killed by sharp propeller blades.

Some of JoJo's wounds were nearly fatal,

but Dean led him into shallow water

and nursed him back to health with antibiotics.

This painful medical treatment would have been impossible

without the strong bond of trust between these two.

Tomorrow I have to go away for four months.

I wish I could speak to JoJo to reassure him that I'll hurry back to see him.

You can hardly blame Dean for wishing he could talk to his underwater companion.

But will we ever learn how dolphins communicate?

To find out, a young scientist has followed her dream,

to a place where dolphins swim free.

Just a hop, skip and a jump off the southeast coast of Florida

is that mellow string of islands called the Bahamas.

Here the living is easy, for Kathleen Dudzinski and the dolphins she studies.

Just one problem:

this is hurricane country.

Hope Town is home base for Kathleen,

as she studies dolphin communication and social behavior.

I've been living and diving here on and off for almost four years.

researching the dolphins...

...and getting to know my neighbors.

There are fifteen hundred miles of reef in the Bahamas.

The combination of deep and shallow water

is an ideal dolphin habitat.

They feed in deep water...

then rest and socialize over sandbars, in shallow, crystal-clear waters,

where sharks can't easily sneak up on them from below.

I teach dolphin conservation

but my main passion is studying communication among Atlantic Spotted dolphins.

I've custom-built a video rig with two underwater microphones,

so I can "eavesdrop" on dolphin conversations.

And you have the two underwater microphones right here, which are hydrophones.

My research is aimed at one underlying goal...

I hope to use any knowledge I gather

to help protect these animals.

In the United States, it's illegal to swim with wild dolphins.

Here in the Bahamas, I never forget that I'm entering their habitat

their home.

Whenever I approach a group of wild dolphins, it still makes my heart race.

They're unpredicatible and majestic, graceful yet powerful animals.

To study their communication,

Kathleen videotapes the dolphins and records the sounds they make.

Dolphins use a distinct set of sounds to communicate with each other:

chirps, squawks,

clicks, whistles

and click trains.

Kathleen looks for consistent match-ups between behavior and vocalizations.

Whenever two adults approach each other, they make click sounds til they meet

then there are two alternatives.

If the two separate right away, they chirp actively.

But when two adults join up and swim together,

side by side,

they barely make a sound.

Why is that?

Kathleen is trying to find the answer.

Dolphins, like my pal Freckles,

seldom move their mouths.

They're basically ventriloquists.

To figure out which one is vocalizing

Kathleen spaced her new microphones about three feet apart,

to exaggerate the stereo sound.

There is one visual cue that a dolphin is vocalizing.

It's called a bubble-stream.

Bubble-streams often accompany whistles.

Even with her new videos as a guide,

it's tough for Kathleen to track this group.

Because individuals come and go freely.

Kathleen has catalogued one hundred and twenty five dolphins by age and gender,

giving each a name and a number.

Dolphins are possibly the only other creatures besides us

who call each other by name.

Of the one hundred and twenty five dolphins I've studied,

I was amazed to discover that adult females vocalize three times more than males.

Why?

As moms, adult females vocalize often to keep their frisky youngsters in line,

and teach them survival skills.