(ambient music)
In ancient Greece, dolphins were venerated
and believed to be our marine brethren,
killing a dolphin was punishable by death.
It was said that dolphins were humans who chose
to return to the sea.
Poseidon, the god of the sea, entrusted them
with the mission of helping humans in peril.
Ever since, there has been no end to the stories
of dolphins rescuing sailors from storms
or ferocious sea monsters.
Endurance swimmer, Adam Walker, has nearly completed
his greatest challenge, swimming the seven most
difficult straits on the planet.
Little does he suspect, during his next swim,
what a group of dolphins will do for him.
(cheerful music)
Why are we so fascinated by these marine mammals,
and why do they seem just as curious about us?
Are dolphins as altruistic and intelligent as we think?
As we travel the globe to meet the world's
top dolphin experts, working to decode dolphin behavior,
one essential question emerges.
If dolphins are so close to humans,
might we one day be able to speak with them?
(dramatic music)
First stop, New Zealand.
The Open Water Swim Challenge Adam Walker has undertaken
is a brutal test of stamina.
One mishap will put him back to square one.
The sixth swim of the ocean seven
is the Cook Strait in New Zealand
which is north of South Island.
It's round about 18 miles, it's got three currents,
and is one of the hardest swims in the world.
More than eight hours in water as cold
as 13 degrees Celsius.
That's at the extreme limits of human endurance.
I thought to myself, please, something good happen
in these swims, and I was praying to the ocean gods,
give me something positive.
Suddenly, Adam is surrounded by a group
of dusky dolphins, it's magical.
But tagging along is an unwelcome guest,
a great white shark.
When he spots the shark, his first thought is,
get back to the support boat.
(tense music)
But his dolphin companions form a barricade around him,
and the shark retreats.
I trained myself to switch off any fears,
because I can't allow it to happen.
I can't leave the water, if I leave the water
the swim's over.
And everything that I've trained for finishes.
I had a choice, I either focus on the shark
or I focus on the dolphins, I chose the dolphins.
But I felt perfectly safe because the dolphins
were alongside me, and I felt like there was no way
for the shark to get through.
Are they there to protect me?
What is happening, are they just curious,
or is it because of the shark?
All these questions are going through my mind,
and how do they work?
Are they like us?
Do they want that connection with us,
that affiliation with us?
What is it all about?
The dolphins stay with Adam
for more than three hours.
With their help, he completes his grueling swim.
And it was only when the pilot said to me,
"Adam, you're losing time because there's three currents
"you gotta get across."
That, I thought in my head, well okay, thanks dolphins
for your support, but I really must get on
with the job at hand.
As soon as I thought like that, then the dolphins
disappeared forever within maybe five seconds.
Rob House, a New Zealand lifeguard
hears Adam's story on the local radio,
and invites him over.
Rob has his own story to share.
One that took place during a swim with his
15 year old daughter and two of her friends.
We basically wanted to go for a training swim,
and it was a good introduction for the girls to go over
to the rocks to get a bit of experience.
Probably about five minutes into our swim,
when suddenly some dolphin fins suddenly appeared
from nowhere.
Really close, started surrounding us and circling
which is unusual.
And there's, of course, the girls who had
swam with dolphins before were starting to get
a bit anxious over it.
A bit of screaming, a bit of questioning.
So I'll just show where we did that.
So we basically got packed into a circle here,
then the behavior changed even more when they started
beating the water with their tails.
I never seen this behavior before,
but it wasn't one dolphin, it was all of the dolphins.
As they surfaced, they were bashing the water
with their tail.
It was very, very loud, intimidating.
Whether it was directed at us or not, I have no idea.
I turned to my right and looked in the water
to see where it was coming up,
and that's when I saw the shark.
Basically, I just saw this big object going around me,
I recognized it straight away.
It was very obviously a great white.
I had to trust the dolphins, basically, they were obviously
aware that there was a predator in the area,
and for that period of time, they had included us
as a part of their extended pod.
And they were implementing their normal behavior patterns
to protect us, to include us.
So you felt like they were protecting you?
After the event, yes.
Yeah, yeah. -: Yeah.
It would seem Adam's experience
is not uncommon.
When his team posted Adam's adventure with dolphins online,
dozens of stories flooded in from around the world
from people who'd been aided or rescued by dolphins.
One, in particular, from Hawaii caught Adam's attention.
Martina Wing, an underwater filmmaker made
this compelling remark,
"Dolphins help us because they know we help them too."
Martina Wing leads night dives among Pacific manta rays
in the waters off Kona, Hawaii.
Until recently, she wasn't particularly interested
in dolphins.
I came in '98 as a tourist.
Someone signed me up for the dive, I did the dive,
brand new diver.
I saw the manta rays, I really fell in love
with the whole setup, I was blown away.
Then someone filmed me that night, and I saw the video
and I bought the video from the guy and I married him.
I think they're really good videos.
The enchanting atmosphere of night diving
set the stage for the moving adventure
Martina would witness.
Drawn by the light, millions of tiny plankton
form a compact mass.
A hearty feast for these gentle giants.
(ambient music)
But in 15 years of daily diving, Martina had never seen
a dolphin join this enchanting ballet until that night.
So, in 2013, it was January I was at my job.
That's what I do for a long time.
I'm filming the manta rays and participants.
And so I was just pretty much at work,
and we had beautiful a beautiful night, it was 12 manta rays
and I suddenly hear something.
It was a noise that get people's attention.
The divemaster was clanging on his tank,
and I look around and there's a dolphin swimming
into the dive site.
I could see he couldn't move his head to the right anymore
so there was a restriction between his mouth
and his pectoral fin.
I keep following, the dolphin is actually swimming
over Keller and right in front of his face,
"Hey, you're the guy that I need right now."
Keller Laros immediately spotted
a huge hook caught in the dolphin's pectoral fin
with its adjoining line caught in its mouth.
The dolphin seemed to understand that only a human
with their dexterous fingers could remove the hook.
I think it's an incredible trust to our species
where he's like, "Yes, you're the solution here,
"and I'm gonna stay here."
It was incredible because he was so holding still
the whole time and I could believe it underwater
what was happening.
In this case, the human was the solution for sure.
He knew that.
He could've swam away anytime.
And he was actually able to cut it off,
and then eventually you see how the pectoral fin opens up,
the line is off, and then the dolphin says,
"Okay, I'm done with this now, I have my pectoral fin back."
And then he moved out and back into the dock
and bye-bye it was incredible.
Dolphins that rescue us and ask us
to rescue them.
Is there more to it?
Back in Europe, Adam heads to the Ile de Sein,
home to a group of some 30 dolphins.
There, he meets up with Fabienne Delfour, a researcher
with the ethology lab at the University of Paris 13,
who's there to observe the dolphins.
Adam wants to learn more about these enigmatic creatures.
(peaceful music)
Fabienne knows just about everything when it comes
to dolphins.
A biologist and animal behavior expert,
she's worked with them for 25 years,
and is associated with the international study,
The Wild Dolphin Project.
Adam's curiosity is driven by the question
that fascinates us all,
is the connection that seems to exist between
humans and dolphins merely an anthropomorphic projection,
or could dolphins truly have some points in common with us?
What makes humans human and sets us apart
from all the other animals, is that we are the only species
to possess five essential faculties.
Abstract and concrete reasoning, self-awareness,
the ability to invent tools, the development of a culture,
and finally, a genuine language.
Could dolphins possess some of these faculties too?
Adam can't get over the dolphin in Hawaii
that knew only a human could solve its problem.
What I find incredible is human beings have only
been underwater for a short period of time, maybe 50 years,
so how did the dolphins know to go to the human being
rather than another dolphin or a whale?
And it's absolutely amazing the connection
between human beings and dolphins, it's incredible.
You can't say humans are connected to dolphins.
It's like saying we're connected to monkeys,
generally speaking.
There are about 30 species of dolphins.
The ones we know best and believe to be the most intelligent
are Tursiops truncatus, bottlenose dolphins, and orcas.
So the myths that we've heard about over the years
between dolphins and human beings
is actually the bottlenose?
That's right.
It seems all the stories of fishermen and swimmers
being rescued by dolphins involve Tursiops truncatus,
or bottlenose dolphins.
When it comes to dolphins, the brainiest one,
the head of the class is the bottlenose.
The dolphin made popular 50 years ago
by the famous TV show, Flipper.
Here in Florida, where the real Flipper lived,
scientists have spent 40 years trying to understand
dolphin cognition.
Just how does their intelligence compare to our own?
At the Dolphin Research Center, Kelly Jaakola,
research director and psychologist is studying
the intelligence of the bottlenose dolphin.
She focuses on one question, can they think
in an entirely abstract way as we do?
Do they understand abstract concepts such as math?
She uses a battery of tests to find out.
(dramatic music)
Specifically here, we're looking at a numerical concept
which is less versus more.
So when you're talking about numbers
and how you quantify numbers, there is something
called numerosity, which is oneness, twoness, threeness,
you can pick out one thing, or two things or three things.
You can also, though, with numbers they're
in an ordered series, right.
It's not just two is different than three.
Two is less than three and three is less than four,
and that's what we're testing here
is whether they have that idea that there is
some sort of series that the numerals go in.
Let's get this ball rolling, I know it's exciting.
Ready.
The dolphin is asked to point to the board
with the fewest white dots.
It's simple at first even though the dots
are different sizes.
(suspenseful music)
Another one.
Then it gets harder.
Each board contains almost the same number of dots.
Less.
Remarkable, the dolphin keeps on giving
the right answer.
Dolphins solve each problem in an average of five seconds.
Not sure most people can match that.
The experiment is repeated dozens of times,
but the dolphin almost always gets it right.
(optimistic music)
No doubt about it, dolphins have a certain mastery
of the concept of numbers.
And they didn't learn it in school.
This gives us some crucial insight into
their cognitive capacities.
In the non-human world, species capable
of abstract reasoning are thought to be very, very rare.
A lot of things that we once thought were specific
to humans, as we test more animals, whether its dolphins
or whether its chimps, we find out that,
oh look, they can do it too and we're maybe not quite
as unique as we thought we were.
(cheering)
Awesome.
Turns out, humans aren't such an exception
in the animal world.
What if we had other things in common?
Before we find out, let's have a look at a faculty
that is theirs alone.
A kind of sixth sense that humans don't have.
(cheering)
So what we do is we took a game that our dolphins
already know, it's called Do as I Do.
So what you have, you have one dolphin who's the model
and his job is to do whatever behavior
the trainer asks him to do.
And then the other dolphin is the imitator,
and his job is to imitate whatever the model dolphin does.
As I said, our dolphins already knew how to play that game,
so we wanted to add a little twist.
And the twist is we blindfolded them.
Well, we used these soft, latex suction cups, really,
that are eye-cups that stick over their eyes.
They can, like all of our behaviors, these are voluntary
so the dolphins can blink them off
if they don't want to wear them and that's fine.
So we blindfold them.
Once they're blindfolded, the trainer of the model dolphin
gives the signal to the model,
"Now I want you to spin," or whatever it is without words.
(suspenseful music)
So the question is, how are they doing it, right?
We took away sight, so the obvious candidate is sound,
but in dolphins that comes in two varieties.
They could have been using the characteristic sound
the behavior makes.
Or, dolphins also have echolocation, their biological sonar.
So it could be they were seeing the behavior with sound.
(mysterious music)
You did the long one, didn't you?
So, in our second study, what we did is we changed
the sound of the behavior.
Well, how do you change the sound of the behavior?
What we did is instead of using a dolphin as a model,
we used a person as a model, because a person
doing dolphin behaviors is going to sound different
than a dolphin doing dolphin behaviors.
Echolocation, found only in dolphins,
whales, and bats, is a system that uses sound waves
to detect objects.
Like ultrasound, waves are reflected and analyzed
to determine an object's distance, shape, size, and density.
Dolphins are able to see with sound.
So what would happen is if they could recognize the sound
of the behavior, they would just recognize
the sound of the behavior mainly with the dolphin
which they already knew.
If, instead, they couldn't recognize the sound,
they would turn and they could echolocate,
and you can see them do that.
They turn and echolocate.
Intelligence is not a linear thing
that some animals have less of it, and some animals
have more of it with humans at the top.
For example, the dolphin has evolved
in a very different environment than us
for 90 to 95 million years.
So when we're talking about our cognitive studies,
we're looking at not how intelligent is the dolphin,
but how is a dolphin intelligent.
Echolocation is a perfect illustration of how.
It is much more sophisticated than the most
state-of-the-art sonar humans have come up with.
In this area, it would seem dolphins have surpassed us.
Dolphins have developed a form of intelligence
that makes them more competent than us
in their own environment.
But let's go back to what we do have in common.
Once again in Hawaii, another dolphin faculty
is coming to light.
Something we believed unique to humans.
Eliza Wille is a psychologist.
She's briefing her patients, Kelly and Marnie Sue
for their first encounter with wild dolphins in Kona Bay.
We're going to be doing our dolphin-assisted
psychotherapy session, okay, later today.
I wanted to give you some idea what to expect.
When we're in the water with the dolphins,
the encounter is always on their terms.
It's never something that we can control.
So one of the lessons here is really relinquishing control
of this and accepting the gift of the day.
Accepting what it is they choose to do
in relative to our presence.
(curious music)
For 15 years, Kelly and Marnie Sue
have suffered from depression and addiction issues
that have no responded to any form of treatment.
They've come to Eliza because with the help of dolphins,
she's designed a thoroughly innovative therapy
that has proven successful.
An experiential therapy is a therapy that enables a client
to have a novel, unusual experience.
We created a situation that almost no one
has ever been in before.
So it generates a lot of emotion, an emotional reaction
that may be fear, it may be excitement.
So this, in effect, allows us to bypass the intellect,
bypass the defenses and take them more quickly
into some of the feelings that have been driving
the maladaptive behavior, the addiction or depression,
or anxieties.
So that's the intention.
(tense music)
Animal-assisted therapy is an alternative
treatment for behavioral problems.
But with dolphins, the sessions can turn into
something quite special.
(cheerful music)
Like the bottlenose, as soon as these dolphins
sense the swimmers' presence, they come over
to check them out.
The curious thing is that over the 10 years
Eliza's been doing this, she's realized the wild dolphins
aren't interested in her or her assistants.
Their full attention is focused on the patients.
The dolphins can sense who needs help.
How?
Their sonar allows them to see the swimmers internal organs.
They can tell when someone's heart is beating too fast
or their diaphragm is contracted, signs of stress
in a suffering patient.
Like the dolphins in New Zealand that comforted Adam
when he was frightened by the shark,
the Kona dolphins sense the vulnerability and anxiety
of the patients and came to console them.
In a matter of seconds, the dolphins had captured
Marnie and Kelly's full attention and their anxiety
and fear of being alone in the open water was forgotten.
Today, the pod was taking off and my peers
and contemporaries were taking off to keep up
with the pod and there was one who was hanging back.
And I froze and I actually stopped.
So everybody else had taken off and I'm looking
at this one dolphin and he's looking at me in the eye.
I was like, you're here for me.
It was a personal moment for me that I would like
to call very spiritual, and it was for me.
There is a power greater than yourself
in admitting that there's something bigger than yourself
that can bring you back to Earth and ground you
and bring your sanity back.
(gentle piano music)
Clear proof that dolphins have an
awareness of others, which is yet another
of the five human cognitive faculties.
Because in order to have awareness of others,
there must first be self-awareness,
something very few animals have.
How can we tell if an animal has self-awareness?
We used the mirror test.
In the equatorial jungle of Gabon, let's watch the most
common reactions when a wild animal sees its own reflection.
There are basically five.
Indifference,
curiosity,
fear,
seduction,
in almost every case, the animal thinks
it's seeing another animal, not itself.
The last reaction and the most common is aggression.
Anger escalates quickly, because the challenger
in the mirror never backs down.
Very few non-human animals pass the test.
And dolphins?
Fabienne Delfour is often consulted on animal behavior
at marine animal facilities.
Today, Brigette Mersera and Fabienne are going
to perform the famous mirror test on bottlenose dolphins.
(speaking French)
We're going to do the mirror experiment.
We've hung a one-way mirror on the window,
and we'll observe the dolphins behavior.
They can't see us?
No, they see themselves but we can see them.
It's really a mirror.
It's a mirror inside the tank,
but it allows us to film them without being seen.
They're going to exhibit a more rhythmic
self-focused behavior.
It's kind of like in a shopping mall, you know,
where there are monitors and there's always
someone who comes up and waves.
Yeah, they give a little wave.
Often, animals that recognize themselves in the mirror
display this kind of behavior.
Unlike gorillas or panthers,
dolphins show neither fear nor aggression.
They know what they see is a reflection of themselves.
Oh, you're handsome. -: Yes you are.
Gorgeous.
(speaking French)
They check themselves out from every angle
and enjoy clowning around.
The mirror experiment allows us to determine
if these animals have awareness of themselves.
Because you must first have a sense of a permanent self
to be able to understand what I see in the mirror
is still me.
But also to be able to distinguish between what I see
and a fellow dolphin.
This really requires elaborate states of consciousness.
What we refer to as self-awareness.
In humans, we know that children pass,
what we call the mirror stage, beginning at about 12 months.
It was Lacan who introduced the concept of the mirror stage.
The dolphins pass the test with flying colors,
they have demonstrated self-awareness,
along with abstract intelligence, that makes two
cognitive faculties they share with human beings.
But are there limits?
Areas where dolphins are not as intelligent
as we might think.
What I'm really confused about is if they get caught
in fishing nets, why don't they just jump out and exit?
Seems a basic form of intelligence to me.
I'm going to show you something, have you got any matches?
No, but I'll go and have a look.
Now, don't worry, 95% of people can't solve this.
I want you to make four triangles using six matches.
I don't know.
Here's the trick, to solve the puzzle,
you have to think in three dimensions, not two.
Most people think in two dimensions,
unless they're forced to think in three,
like pilots or astronauts.
Dolphins think in three dimensions.
Their way of thinking is completely different from our own.
What we need to understand is that intelligence
is a multitude of cognitive capacities such as abstraction,
innovation, tool use, and learning.
When dolphins get stuck in a net for the first time,
it's an extremely stressful situation,
and they have to come up with a solution for it.
Once they've solved the problem, it's forever,
like you with the matches.
Once you've learned to think in 3-D, you've got it.
It's something you never forget.
Makes sense, just like human beings.
Exactly.
Exploring, experimenting, learning,
all signs of intelligence.
Young dolphins learn different hunting techniques
from their elders.
But sometimes, putting them into practice
is a dangerous feat.
Orcas are the largest members of the dolphin family,
growing up to 10 meters long and weighing up to nine tons.
They rival the bottlenose dolphin in intelligence.
In the shallow waters Whangarei Harbor,
a family of orcas is here to hunt.
Each year, they come closer and closer to the shore,
risking stranding and death.
Fortunately, the orcas have loyal friends in the region,
like Dr. Ingrid Visser, founder of the Orca Research Trust,
who has been doing amazing work here for many years.
One of the reasons that we get so many strandings
of orcas in New Zealand is they come into shallow harbors
just like this.
And they're coming in here to hunt for rays.
The rays, of course, don't want to be eaten
so they come into very shallow water as well.
And in fact, it gets so shallow that at times
the orca is swimming along and they don't even
have enough water to submerge so their dorsal fin
is sticking out.
But it doesn't matter, for whatever reason they get stranded
they usually need help from people.
It's really important to get there as quick as we can
so that we can give them first aid,
and look after them until we can get back out
into the water.
So this is Putita, it's the second time he's got stranded.
Here we go.
Good guy, come on.
It's no easy task to move a five ton orca.
Ingrid and her team needed an especially big wave
to help them lift Putita.
In deeper water, two members of his family
keep an eye on the scene.
Come on, you can do it big guy.
I know, come on.
He's stranded a few years ago when he was a bit smaller,
and that's his mom and his brother just out there now.
After two hours of hard work,
Ingrid and her team are still struggling
to keep Putita in an upright position.
But they're not about to let the orcas down.
(triumphant music)
The relationship of trust Ingrid has developed
with the orca family in Whangarei Harbor
has given her unique access to their world.
Ingrid has rescued so many orcas that they're
no longer wary of her.
They seem to accept her as one of their own.
This has allowed her to get very close to them,
and she's discovered something amazing
while watching them hunt.
A striking illustration of concrete intelligence.
It doesn't matter where you go around the world
and you go and observe an orca, you're going to see them
hunting in different ways.
And that's what part of makes up their cultures,
and it's really fascinating as an orca biologist
to see how different they are in different locations.
And so just like you have with humans
these different cultures and beach populations
are completely different.
To study the unique cultures of the orcas
in her area, Ingrid cuts straight to the chase.
One of the things that I realized when I first started
doing my research was that if you really wanted
to understand what was going on with the animals
under the surface, you need to actually get
in the water with them.
Any whale or dolphin that's coming up to the surface
is typically just coming up for a brief moment
to take a breath.
And the real behavior, the real stuff that I'm interested in
the feeding behavior is going on underwater.
So it makes logical sense to try and get in with the animals
and watch from there.
On each dive, the orcas greet Ingrid
briefly and then go about their business.
By following them with her small camera, she discovered
this orca population has a remarkable behavior
that relies on their sense of observation and intelligence.
The New Zealand orca are unique.
And one of the most obvious things is
in the way that they hunt.
When they're hunting for the rays, they come into
shallow bays just like this one here,
and they go into very, very shallow water.
So, sometimes less than a meter deep.
These orcas have learned that hunting
requires more than just brawn.
It takes many hours of watching and practice
for them to perfect their stealth technique
and catch rays hiding among the rocks.
(tense music)
When a ray is picked up by the tail, head down,
it becomes motionless and defenseless,
a state known as tonic immobility.
Once horizontal, it can move again.
Using this deceptively simple technique,
the orcas catch the rays with no risk of a nasty jab
from the dagger-like stingers.
Brains win out over brawn.
Because I've been doing the research for so long,
I know many of the individuals and I know them
well enough to recognize them by sight.
I can predict certain behaviors that they're going to do.
So for instance, Rocky, he's called that
because he hunts in amongst the rocks.
So when I see him, I am pretty sure that
he's going to go up into the rocky areas
and look for stingrays.
Miracle will come up to the boat,
and she brings her calf over and the calf
is very curious as well.
And so these different individual orca allow me
to also get a little bit more of insight into their lives.
(orcas squealing)
There's no doubt strong bonds can be forged
between our two species.
Perhaps to show her she's part of the family,
the orcas offer Ingrid a share of their catch.
Even though I've been doing research on orca
for over 20 years, I can still go out there and find
new stuff, things that have never been seen before
by anybody and make world first discoveries.
It's really remarkable when you are out there
with these animals, because they're wild animals
and they don't have to spend time around you.
They can easily swim off.
And I've been very, very privileged to have the opportunity
to see some absolutely remarkable stuff
with orca coming up to my boat, bringing food.
(tense music)
Inventing such a complex hunting technique
merely by observing their prey, tells us they're using
concrete reasoning.
Yet another form of intelligence we share with them.
And our quest continues.
Adam Walker and Fabienne Delfour venture once more
into the waters off the Ile-de-Sein.
The spectacle of wild dolphins swimming in the open ocean
still fascinates Adam.
It's just that once we've become intrigued by dolphins,
sooner or later, a controversial question arises.
Fabienne, it's so wonderful to see them in the wild.
Tell me, why do we have to study them in captivity?
In my mind, studying them in captivity
and out in the wild are actually two sides of the same coin.
In the past 50 years, we've learned so much about animals.
For 50 years, we've been studying dolphins in captivity.
And we've learned so many things.
And this information has helped us to protect them better.
We can protect animals out of love,
but we can also make some enormous errors
in the name of love.
So one way to protect animals is to understand them better.
To do this, we need to study them.
We can do so in the wild, but as we've seen,
the opportunities are brief.
In captivity, we can follow what we call ontogeny.
In other words, the development of countless processes.
So it's quite complementary to conduct studies
in the wild as well in captivity.
In my opinion, that's the best way to understand
who they are.
Once we know who they are, we'll understand what they need.
At that point, we'll be able to make the best decisions
to protect them.
(upbeat music)
But after 50 years of research
on dolphins in captivity, haven't we learned
enough about them?
What good is it to keep performing experiment
after experiment?
(catchy music)
Is scientific research the only reason we continue
to keep dolphins in captivity?
On another level, there's the issue of should
marine mammal facilities exist at all?
And I definitely think yes for two different reasons,
first, the vast majority of what we know about dolphins,
physiology, cognition, and reproduction, all of that,
the vast majority of that has been learned
in marine mammal facilities.
And we still have a lot to learn.
Kelly Jaakola cites other reasons,
these dolphins were born in captivity
and have always known humans.
They would never survive in the open sea.
But for her, the bottom line is it's not just about science
it's also about raising public awareness.
Marine mammal facilities provide a forum
for the public to experience these animals,
to learn about the challenges they face in the wild,
and to form the kind of emotional connections
that are really important.
So, the only way that we're ever gonna get conservation
is gonna eventually boil down to the millions upon millions
of decisions that everyday people make.
Well, how do you effect that?
We know that if you bring them into a facility like ours,
and you give them up close and personal experiences
with animals, with these animals,
at that point, is when they make an emotional connection.
And that emotional connection is the start
of conservation-mindedness.
It's not enough just to tell them the information.
People have to know the information, but they have
to care enough to actually go out and do something about it.
For Kelly Jaakola, these dolphins serve
as ambassadors that provide a link between humans
and their fellow dolphins in the wild.
Dr. Ingrid Visser is one of the experts who staunchly
condemn the scientific and educational usefulness
of marine mammal facilities.
If you look at any research that's been done
in captivity, it's not necessarily a true reflection
of the animals.
Some of these animals, like orca for instance,
they're traveling 100 to 150 kilometers
in a single day in the wild.
In captivity, they won't even do 100 laps
around one of those tanks.
It's like taking you or myself, locking us
in the bathroom of your house for the rest of your life.
And the only time that you get any entertainment
is if somebody comes in and tells you
you have to do some tricks and then you'll get your food.
I mean, come on, really?
In my mind, I truly believe that the time has come
for us to only be looking at whales and dolphins
in the wild.
If we have a really burning question, then surely
we're smart enough to be able to ask it in the right way
that we can work with these animals out in the wild
on their terms.
Researchers may never agree on the best ways
to study dolphins.
Even if they all harbor the same passion for them.
A passion that Adam Walker now fully shares.
Through Fabienne, he's learned that dolphins and humans
share abstract and concrete intelligence,
a capacity for empathy, and self-awareness.
But that's not all.
The second half of our adventure will take us
to other locations around the world
where we'll meet more top dolphin experts
working with these highly intelligent animals.
People, with whom dolphins actually collaborate as a team.
We'll follow wild dolphins on the hunt.
And we may even embark on the beginnings
of a conversation with them.
(ambient music)