Part 3

Dolphins have been known to push a mattress quite empty of human beings for considerable distances at sea. Possibly it is merely the pushing that interests them, and not the saving of any human beings that might be atop of them.

Is there any evidence that dolphins save drowning swimmers? There is.

In 1945 the wife of a well-known trial attorney residing in Florida was saved from drowning by a dolphin. This woman had stepped into a sea with a strong undertow and was immediately dragged under. Just before losing consciousness, she remembers hoping that someone would push her ashore. “With that, someone gave me a tremendous shove, and I landed on the beach, face down, too exhausted to turn over ... when I did, no one was near, but in the water almost eighteen feet out a porpoise was leaping around, and a few feet beyond him another large fish was also leaping.”

In this case the porpoise was almost certainly a dolphin and the large fish a fishtail shark. A man who had observed the events from the other side of a fence told the rescued woman that this was the second time he had seen a drowning person saved by a “porpoise.”

More recently, on the night of February 29, 1960, Mrs. Yvonne M. Bliss of Stuart fell from a boat off the east coast of Grand Bahama Island in the West Indies. “After floating, swimming, shedding more clothing for what seemed an eternity, I saw a form in the water to the left of me.... It touched the side of my hip and, thinking it must be a shark, I moved over to the right to try to get away from it.... This change in my position was to my advantage as heretofore I was bucking a cross tide and the waves would wash over my head and I would swallow a great deal of water. This sea animal which I knew by this time must be a porpoise had guided me so that I was being carried with the tide.

“After another eternity and being thankful that my friend was keeping away the sharks and barracuda for which these waters are famous, the porpoise moved back of me and came around to my right side. I moved over to give room to my companion and later knew that had not the porpoise done this, I would have been going downstream to deeper and faster moving waters. The porpoise had guided me to the section where the water was the most shallow.

“Shortly I touched what felt like fish netting to my feet. It was seaweed and under that the glorious and most welcome bottom.

“As I turned toward shore, stumbling, losing balance, and saying a prayer of thanks, my rescuer took off like a streak on down the channel.”

The reader must be left to make what he can of such occurrences. Dr. George G. Goodwin of the American Museum of Natural History doubts the intention of dolphins to save drowning persons. “Anything floating,” he writes, “on or near the surface of the sea will attract his attention. His first action on approaching the object of his curiosity is to roll under it. In doing so, something partly submerged, like the body of a drowning person, is nudged to the surface of the water. The sea does its part and automatically drives floating objects toward the beach.” This may well be so in some cases, but it is an explanation which does not fit the incidents described by Mrs. Bliss, in which she was not pushed but guided. Occam’s razor should not be too bluntly applied.

The cooperativeness of dolphins with fishermen in various parts of the world has gone on for several thousand years without its significance having registered much upon the consciousness of the rest of the world—including the learned and the scientific.

In the Mediterranean from the earliest days, as recorded by Aelian in his On the Characteristics of Animals, VI, 15, to the present day, torchlight fishing with the aid of dolphins has been a traditional way of fishing. This has been described by Nicholas Apostolides in his book La Pêche en Grèce, who tells how fishermen of the Sporades catch their garfish “in the darkest nights of the month of October” by methods very similar to those described by Aelian. Briefly, the fish attracted by the fishermen’s flares begin to collect, whereupon the dolphins appear and drive them into the fishermen’s nets.

Similar methods of fishing were practiced in the Antipodes, off the New Zealand and Queensland coasts. The aborigines of Moreton Bay, Queensland, used to catch mullet with the aid of dolphins, at a place appropriately enough called Amity Point. The aborigines recognized individual dolphins and called them by name. With their nets ready on the beach the aborigines waited for a shoal of fish to appear, whereupon they would run down and make a peculiar splashing in the water with their spears, and the dolphins on the outside of the shoal would drive the fish towards the nets for the aborigines to catch. Fairholme, who described these events in 1856, writes, “For my part I cannot doubt that the understanding is real, and that the natives know these porpoises [actually the dolphin Tursiops catalania], and that strange porpoises would not show so little fear of the natives. The oldest men of the tribe say that the same kind of fishing has always been carried on as long as they can remember. Porpoises abound in the bay, but in no other part do the natives fish with their assistance.”

The Irrawaddy River dolphin is also an assistant-fisherman. John Anderson reports that “The fishermen believe that the dolphin purposely draws fish to their nets, and each fishing village has its particular guardian dolphin which receives a name common to all the fellows of his school; and it is this superstition which makes it so difficult to obtain specimens of this Cetacean. Colonel Sladen has told me that suits are not infrequently brought into the native courts to recover a share in the capture of fish, in which a plaintiff’s dolphin has been held to fill the nets of rival fishermen.” (John Anderson, Account of the Zoological Results of Two Expeditions to Western Yunnan.)

The Pink-Bellied river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis) of the Trapajós, a tributary of the Amazon, also helps its human friends with fishing. Dr. F. Bruce Lamb says that this dolphin, locally known as the boto, “is reported to have saved the lives of helpless persons whose boats have capsized, by pushing them ashore. None of the dreaded flesh-eating piranhas appear when a porpoise is present, for they themselves would be eaten.” And he goes on to give an eye-witness account of fishing with the aid of a trained dolphin. “My curiosity was aroused,” he writes, “by the paddler, who began tapping on the side of the canoe with his paddle between strokes and whistling a peculiar call. Asking Rymundo about this, he startled me by casually remarking that they were calling their boto, their porpoise.... As we approached the fishing grounds near the riverbank, Rymundo lit his carbide miner’s lamp, adjusted the reflector, chose his first harpoon, and stood up in the bow ready for action. Almost immediately on the offshore side of the canoe about 50 feet from us we heard a porpoise come up to blow and take in fresh air.” The porpoise then chased the fish toward the canoe and Rymundo harpooned them with ease.

Many ancient writers have referred to the brilliancy of the changeful colors when the dolphin is dying. Byron makes reference to this in “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,”

“Parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new colour as it gasps away; The last still loveliest, till ’tis gone, and all is gray.”

Here is a peculiar confusion, for this is not the mammalian dolphin of which we have been speaking, but the swift piscivorous oceanic fish Coryphaena hippurus, the dolphin of sailors. It is blue with deeper spots, and gleaming with gold. It is, indeed, famous for the beauty of its changing colors when dying. The mammalian dolphin exhibits no such spectacular color changes when dying.

Happily, it is not with dying dolphins or with their changing colors that we are concerned here, but rather with ours, the changing color of the complexion of our once too sophisticated beliefs. Beliefs which, in their own way, were very much more in the nature of myths than the ancient ones which we wrote off a little too disdainfully as such. The history of the dolphin constitutes an illuminating example of the eclipse of knowledge once possessed by the learned, but which was virtually completely relegated to the outermost fringes of mythology during the last eighteen hundred years. Perhaps there is a moral to be drawn here. If so, I shall leave it to others to draw. But now that scientific interest in the dolphin has been aroused we are entering into a new era of delphinology, and with the confirmation of so many of the observations of the ancients already made, we may look forward with confidence to others. Dolphins have large brains; possibly they will some day be able to teach us what brains are really for.

Appendix A A Note for Bibliophiles

It was an ancient belief, as Camerarius tells us, that “when tempests arise, and seamen cast their anchor, the dolphin, from its love to man, twines itself round it, so that it may more safely lay hold of the ground.” I know of no verifying evidence for this statement, but should not be surprised to find some element of truth in it. The dolphin twined about an anchor is the device which Aldus Manutius (1450-1515) adopted for his Aldine Press, which began publication in 1494. This device was later adapted to his own use by the English publisher William Pickering (1796-1854).

The representation of the dolphin twined about the anchor refers to no maritime supremacy of that creature, but rather to its kindly regard for man. The following poem in George Wither’s A Collection of Emblemes (1635), throws some additional light on the meaning of the emblem.

If Safely, thou desire to goe, Bee nor too Swift, nor overslow. [Emblem] [Dolphin and Anchor] Illvstr.X. Book 2.

Our Elders, when their meaning was to shew A native-speedinesse (in Emblem wise) The picture of a Dolphin-Fish they drew; Which, through the waters, with great swiftnesse, flies. An Anchor, they did figure, to declare Hope, stayednesse, or a grave-deliberation: And therefore when those two, united are, Its giveth us a two-fold Intimation. For, as the Dolphin putteth us in minde, That in the Courses, which we have to make, Wee should not be, to slothfulnesse enclin’d; But, swift to follow what we undertake: So, by an Anchor added thereunto, Inform’d wee are, that, to maintaine our speed, Hope, must bee joyn’d therewith (in all we doe) If wee will undiscouraged proceed. It sheweth (also) that, our speedinesse, Must have some staydnesse; lest, when wee suppose To prosecute our aymes with good successe, Wee may, by Rashnesse, good endeavors lose. They worke, with most securitie, that know The Times, and best Occasions of delay; When, likewise, to be neither swift, nor slow; And, when to practise all the speed, they may. For, whether calme, or stormie-passages, (Through this life’s Ocean) shall their Bark attend; This double Vertue, will procure their ease: And, them, in all necessities, befriend. By Speedinesse, our works are timely wrought; By Staydnesse, they, to passe are, safely, brought. From A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, by George Wither. London, 1635. Book 2, p. 72.

Appendix B Dolphins and Their Distribution

Order: CETACEA Suborder: ODONTOCETI Family: Delphinidae Subfamily: Delphininae Genus: Delphinus Subfamily: Delphinapterinae Genus: Monodon Genus: Delphinapterus

The Suborder Odontoceti of the Order Cetacea consists of the toothed whales, in contrast to the toothless whalebone or baleen whales, the Mystacoceti. The whales are large dolphins or one may say that dolphins are small whales. The members of the Odontoceti are the Dolphin, Freshwater Dolphin, Porpoise, Sperm Whale or Cachalot, Lesser Sperm Whale, Bottle-Nose Whale, Narwhal or Sea-Unicorn, White Whale, Pilot Whale or Black-Fish, Killer Whale or Grampus.

Delphinus delphis: The Common Dolphin. It is easily recognized by its well-defined narrow beak and distinctive coloration, being darker above than below. There is a narrow beak, which is sharply marked off from the low reclining forehead by a V-shaped groove. A length of up to 8½ feet has been recorded. Range of distribution is very wide. May be met in any temperate or warm sea throughout the world, and occurs at times in vast schools.

Delphinus roseiventris: The Red-Bellied Dolphin. Moluccas and Torres Straits, Australia; 3 feet 10 inches.