Dolphin, Dolphin

Hodder and Stoughton, 1982, reprint.

In 1975, dolphins interrupted their journey up the east coast of northern New Zealand to frolic in the sea with a boatload of humans. They played games, acting with good humor and ease. Was it more than just a game? Were the dolphins willing to meet humans? Did they want to communicate? Further encounters with dolphins made Wade and Jan Doak feel they were on the brink of a revelation.

There were so many ideas to try in the search for a two-way dialogue. Music? Mimicry? And was it proper to intrude on their territory, or did one wait for them to offer an invitation? Wade and Jan sold their house and bought a Polynesian catamaran which they transformed into a specially rigged research vessel.

Dolphin, Dolphin tells how the dolphins responded to these and other experiments. Journal entries capture the excitement and wonder of encounters which gradually developed into a relationship.

Project Interlock came into being. Dolphins had deliberately aided mariners in distress, and set up enduring friendships with chosen people. Swimmers, divers, surfers and yachtsmen reported meetings with friendly and strangely communicative dolphins. Britain and South Africa, Spain, the Bahamas and Australia, Hawaii and the two Americas brought fascinating anecdotes.

The pathway to friendship with dolphins extends to physical contact and play with the great whales. The future possibilities that Wade Doak outlines are fascinating. The great brain capacity of the cetaceans can be used in ways that we cannot fully comprehend. These possiblities come excitingly together when Doak, attending the 1980 conference on cetacean intelligence in Washington, D.C., reviews modern research in this field and then, in the coastal waters of Hawaii, discovers new horizons for human/cetacean exploration.