This is an astonishing story and powerfully informs us that as we
learn to properly work with the ocean, that our natural allies in
this endeavor are already there for us. I wonder why?
Recall that we have an outstanding conjecture that humanity
established a global civilization as early as 40,000 years ago until
the deliberate abandonment in preparation for the Pleistocene
Nonconformity of 12900 years ago. That happens to be an effective
working span of some 27,000 years at least. Assuming they then took
at least twenty thousand of those years to reach modernity, we still
have several thousands of years in which to prefect husbandry
methods. That would include the oceans and would require the need
for smart dolphins.
Thus it is possible that this affinity is no accident at all.
Dolphins
Guide Scientists to Rescue Suicidal Girl
Posted
by Maddalena Bearzi of Ocean Conservation
Society in Ocean Views on May 29, 2014
One
day, my research team and I were following a school of bottlenose
dolphins near shore as we do on a regular basis in the waters off Los
Angeles, California. We just wrapped up our photo-identification work
and were moving on to take video of dolphin social interactions
and enter data on behavior.
The
dolphins were still feeding in circle near shore, when suddenly, one
individual changed direction heading out toward deeper water. A
minute later, the rest of the school turned to follow. We were so
accustomed to tracking these coastal metropolitan dolphins back and
forth within a few hundred meters of the beach, that seeing them
abruptly leave a foraging ground and change direction came as a
surprise to the research team. I decided to follow them.
The
dolphins increased their speed, still heading offshore as I pushed
the throttle ahead to keep pace while one of my researchers recorded
this hasty change in behavior on the sighting form. Somewhere near
three miles offshore the dolphin group stopped, forming a sort of
ring around a dark object in the water.
“Someone’s
in the water!” yelled my assistant, standing up and pointing at the
seemingly lifeless body of a girl. For a moment, we were silent.
Then, slowly, I maneuvered the boat closer. The girl was pallid and
blonde and appeared to be fully clothed. As the boat neared, she
feebly turned her head toward us, half-raising her hand as a weak
sign for help.
I
cut the engine and called the lifeguards on the VHF radio. They told
us not to do anything until they arrived on site but it was our
unanimous feeling that if we didn’t act immediately, the girl would
die. We decided to ignore lifeguard’s instructions, instead pulling
the frail and hypothermic body on board. I called the lifeguards back
and informed them that she was alive and that we had her aboard and
we were heading back to Marina del Rey, the closest harbor, as
quickly as possible.
“She
is cyanotic,” said one of my researchers, also a lifeguard, after a
cursory examination. “She has severe hypothermia. We need to get
her warm!” We managed to get some of her wet garments off and wrap
her in a blanket. We took turns keeping her warm by huddling with her
under the blanket.
The
girl was around eighteen and probably foreign because we couldn’t
seem to communicate. We tried speaking French, Italian, and Spanish
to no avail and she was barely able to speak but none of us could
understand what she was saying. I couldn’t avoid noticing a plastic
bag tied around her neck. It was sealed and seemed to contain her
passport and a folded handwritten note. Somewhere near the harbor, we
met up with the lifeguard rescue boat. We handed her off to them and
followed them back to port.
A
couple of hours later, we were all waiting outside the emergency room
at the Marina del Rey hospital. The ER doctor came out to talk with
us. The girl, it seems, would pull through, and he thanked us for our
quick action. He tells us the girl was vacationing in L.A. from
Germany and, as the letter found in her plastic bag explained, she
was attempting suicide. If we hadn’t found her, if the dolphins
hadn’t led us offshore when they did, to that specific place, she
would have died.
Busy
as we were trying to save the girl, we completely lost track of the
dolphins. What might they have done with her if we hadn’t been
there? Might they have tried to save her? There are many anecdotal
accounts of dolphins saving humans from death and disaster, either by
guiding them to shore, fending off sharks or helping them to remain
afloat until help arrives.
Many
scientists think dolphins do not, in fact, save humans because there
is not enough hard scientific evidence to support these stories. But
that day I witnessed coastal bottlenose dolphins suddenly leave their
feeding activities and head offshore. And in doing so, they led us to
save a dying girl, some three miles offshore. Coincidence?
This
article has been adapted from the book Dolphin Confidential:
Confessions of a Field Biologist (Chicago University Press,
2012).
Maddalena
Bearzi has studied the ecology and conservation of marine mammals for
over twenty-five years. She is President and Co-founder of the Ocean
Conservation Society, and Co-author of Beautiful Minds: The
Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins (Harvard University
Press, 2008; paperback 2010). She also works as a photo-journalist
and blogger for several publications. Her most recent book is Dolphin
Confidential: Confessions of a Field Biologist(Chicago University
Press, 2012).
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