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BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS IN THE SAVANNAH RIVER - Continued

… ocean-roving sea turtles, whales, and blue fin and yellow fin tuna.

But dolphins have not built container ships and it is the huge orange and blue container ships moving slowly and mysteriously from the sea to the Port of Savannah, guided by hefty Moran tugboats, which attract our attention away from these cheerful benevolent pods of dolphins. Containers are the twenty-foot trailer part of a semitrailer truck that one sees on the highway. Often, there are 6000 containers aboard one ship. They carry dry goods or all the stuff anyone who lives in air may need to flourish: toys, clothes, electronics, and Hyundai cars.

Exhausted tourists suffering low blood sugar from all the pralines they have eaten are leaning against the wrought iron fence by the Savannah Marriot Riverfront, where Joanie and I recently stayed for five days. Unaware of the swirling dorsal fins near the famous River Walk, the tourists, still surprised they have not broken an ankle on the granite cobblestones, are watching these big deep-water ships inching slowly downriver. Laughing and drinking from plastic cups, students on spring break stroll aimlessly by trying to enjoy mindless chatter while being a little drunk and texting on their cell phones. This profoundly distracted new generation notices neither the tourists nor the dolphins nor the silent ships maneuvering past each other.

All these humans and the 230,00 others living in Savannah that day are deeply enmeshed in a beautiful interesting curious city, intimately familiar with a quintessential human culture that is both old and important. But in them all, the young and the old, the fit and the unfit, the tourist and the locals, there is eternal disquiet.

Perhaps to an exuberant joyful dolphin leaping out of the water to see what’s going on with us, we are all pinched little spirits, unfamiliar with the elements, craving elation and a real connection to the universe which, according to the Hubble telescope, does not seem to be a dry goods kind of place.

Here we are, big-brained land creatures addicted to cozy enclosed spaces. Our electric plugs, desks with computers, libraries of books, not to mention drawers full of sweaters, closets full of shoes, and garages full of cars, golf carts, and bicycles, are all ruined if there is a flood. Our stuff, our gear, our photographs, our very soul as a species, needs to be dry. It is ironic that we ourselves, in our fondness for elaborate linguistic precision, have also defined dry as uninteresting, wearisome, and not sweet: something that forever wet and sleek dolphins can never be accused of. Former generations of linguists have even defined being dry as lacking life or spirit.

Whatever we are, living in the air, often with cumulonimbus clouds hanging over us, has made us want to be walled in, protected inside a house. Without four walls, we are lost, having

no insulating fur, no claws, no fangs, no speed, and no particular agility. Thus, we like to live in rooms surrounded by our stuff. It is this stuff that we carry home in plastic bags, turn on with batteries, buy packed in Styrofoam that has forever changed the surface of the planet and perhaps even diverted attention away from our true purpose here. Anyway, we are the children of continents, our legs useless on three-quarters of the earth’s surface.

Savannah is not as ancient as Budapest or London or Paris but like them it has its river and in this river small pods of big-brained dolphins swim under and around the container ships twenty-six miles out to the Atlantic and back, cavorting and playing along the way, peaceful, benevolent beings unmindful of the plaques and statues, cathedrals and little parks making up this old historical city that General Sherman once gave to President Lincoln as a Christmas present. Boundless water is the space of their happiness. They need nothing except fish to eat and each other to love. Of course, they have their thoughts. Dolphins are not just a little smarter than dogs or chimpanzees. Their brain volume, brain convolutions and social interactions, all the things responsible for human intelligence, exceed our own. Quite recently, the three major tuna companies, after much debate, conceded that dolphins can be considered non-human persons, having all the qualities that human individuals have: intelligence, a form of language, consciousness of oneself, ability to love, and a sense of humor, to name just a few. Thus, they invented dolphin-safe nets with holes in them so the smooth dolphin could slip out.

Dolphins spend their whole lives in the sea unafraid of darkness and depth, wind and waves. They have no shelter from rain or sun. Some call dolphins and whales the Cetacean Nation and suggest that all waters of the earth, 70 per cent of the earth’s surface, belong to them. Once land creatures, these mammals returned to the sea millions of years ago, immediately tripling their living space. Since then they have developed telepathy and echo-location, a sort of x-ray vision by way of acoustics, of anything they encounter. They seem to read the thoughts and emotions of whoever they are with.

The dreary Savannah River will soon be dredged even deeper to 48 feet to encompass the mega ships from China carrying ever more containers as they sail through a renovated Panama Canal. This little pod of dolphins can hardly be expected to understand why we build gigantic vessels to carry stuff we eventually put in our basements, attics and dumps. Why do we carry fifty pounds of baggage to seriously go anywhere? Why do we need our keys and wallet and cell phone to take a walk around the block? How can anyone unburdened by possessions, money, and greed for land and fishing rights, ever understand us? Avarice is unknown to them.

For thousands of years our species has been indifferent or hostile to these sociable companions, condescending, and trivializing their presence in the sea. Dolphin meat is used in canned cat food and dog food all over the world. Tuna fishermen inadvertently kill hundreds of thousands of dolphins each year and simply throw them back into the sea as waste. How strange then that these animals continue to show us friendliness and desire to help if they come across a swimmer in distress, or a child wading among them.

Still, wild dolphins weighing 200 pounds and carrying a mouthful of teeth are formidable creatures who must be respected. They dislike being touched by rowdy unconscious humans, especially those they do not know. Now and then, one of them can seriously bump a swimmer or even bite a hand or a leg in annoyance.

Recently, wild bottlenose dolphins have been seen killing porpoises for no apparent reason and even killing infant dolphins. But these are rare sightings, stress related, and do not seem like the normal behavior of this species which has been recorded over centuries. (An example of such stress has occurred in our own Tampa Bay where the 800 dolphins living here are constantly subjected to the dangerous and rude antics of drunken boaters who throw beer bottles at them and even shoot at them.)

It is their consistent loving-kindness that is both irresistible and impossible to understand. Recent discoveries indicate that dolphins relate to us with gentility and tenderness not out of instinct but out of a conscious awareness of how their own actions affect another being. They are particularly careful swimming with disabled, autistic, frail or depressed people. Generations of humans have experienced a profound therapeutic, healing effect in dolphin encounters. Being with a bottlenose dolphin is like being with someone you deeply love who has suddenly come into your vicinity. .

For twenty-five years, scientists at Kewalo Basin Marine Laboratory in Hawaii worked closely with two dolphins trying to teach them English. The dolphins reluctantly learned many simple words as well as sign language before they both died of mouth tumors a few months apart. During all those years their captors did not attempt telepathic communication. In the end, the misery and stress of trying to change from clicks and whistles to vowels and those awful consonants proved fatal. We were trying to teach them some kind of land-based skill they had long discarded, instead of trying to learn from them why the vibrations they emit have such a profound impact on us; why in their presence people can experience vast increases in energy, vitality and awareness on all levels.

When we escape the pull of gravity and move out among the stars we will leave our benevolent dolphins behind as well as their affection for us, their sympathy and compassion. Is there really another creature among the stars so forgiving, charming, and agreeable; another creature who will love or show any signs of loving even our most troubled and vulnerable individuals? What are we looking for anyway?

Perhaps we don’t appreciate our dolphins because they seem not to worry as much as we do. We worry about everything. That’s why we have weather reports, the insurance business, vitamins, seat belts and salad spinners. Because we must protect all our stuff from being stolen, we have created an entire industry of locksmiths and burglar alarms. Even our children possess guns. It seems that the widespread happiness in creatures who have no dread of the future is a quality humans scorn as being naïve or dim-witted, a sign of an inferior species.

It was hard for us to imagine the dolphins splashing near AJ’s Dockside Restaurant on Tybee Island at sunset, jumping and diving on orange-gold ripples, ever worrying about germs or economic collapse or political corruption. Tybee Island is fifteen miles north of the River Walk in Savannah, beyond the reach of container ships.

Is the point of evolution container ships and yard sales and flea markets and things that in the end we must throw away? Could it not be huge gentle brains in bodies perfectly designed for floating endlessly through the depths from one ocean to another, daydreaming, reflecting upon being alive, following the stars, clicking and whistling and pulsing one’s thoughts to the voyagers one finds along the way? Companions to the ancient leatherback turtles and the whales, the dolphin’s need for conflict, hostility, and hatred seems less overpowering than ours. Less encumbered, less distracted, they seem more in tune with reality than our kind.

All gaiety, charm and intelligence they cruise the waters in affectionate devoted groups of friends and family, constantly touching, talking, playing and exploring, communicating by vibration. Up to ten generations coexist at one time. They hunt together, eat together, sleep together, and fight off sharks together.

They follow the tides and the moonlight and perhaps wistfully look toward land with all of us crowding the beaches. They have long acknowledged our minds. We could have been such a good friend to them. Perhaps they could have shared something with us, something they have discovered in the long eons of their existence: perhaps they could have shared with us how to shrug off that nagging eternal disquiet.

To order her book, On a Planet Sailing West”, go to http://www.jlblue.com/

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