Dolphins guide scientists to rescue suicidal girl
Bottlenose dolphin school foraging along the Los Angeles coastline.
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).
Oh my God. What an inspiring story-thanks. When I was a kid, I believed the world was magic. Then I was told the world was not magic, that it was mechanistic, nothing magic here-Cause and effect-grow up. But I held a fervent wish inside that when I grew up the world would be magic somehow anyway. It is! After being laid off in 2008 I became profoundly depressed. For months, an aquaintance I had met just briefly, kept calling me but I didn't answer my phone for anyone. Finally I saw her and she wept with relief and hugged me tight. She had been deeply effected by my depression (that no one knew about but my family in NJ) and felt something was wrong so much so that she had been searching the streets for weeks looking for me. I was stunned. She's a tad psychic and was feeling my pain everyday. Magic.
Love it!
"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."
One man's "anecdotal accounts" are another man's hard evidence. In a court of law, an anecdotal account is known as "eye witness testimony" and is considered to be enough proof to sentence a person to a life in prison or give someone the death sentence. So to my mind, there's plenty of evidence that dolphins save humans.
Brian, I love your sentiments about wishing that the world was magic, I have had very similar feelings too! I think that's why I really got into playing video games and reading fantasy novels - it was an outlet for my magical wishes and role playing in an otherwise rational world.
More and more, as you mentioned, I am discovering that the world *is* filled with magic, and it is made no less so if science can explain the marvels that we experience! That's the funny thing about miracles - some people seem to think that a situation loses its qualification as miraculous if the physics, the cause, and the effect can be explained, but to me a miracle is any moment that is truly appreciated for the perfection of timing and manifestation from the myriad of causes and effects that bring it into being.
It warms my heart so much to hear more and more accounts of people coming to feel for themselves that we are all interconnected, to hear stories of near death experiences and first-hand accounts that life is never ending, to hear of people connecting with the living and the deceased. It really does bring back hope and faith that life really is as magical as I once trusted it to be. (Not to ignore the fact that we have a lot of dysfunction, disharmony, and imbalance to heal as well)
Love, Trish
Thanks John, great post!
Trish
Loved hearing your thoughts about magic. Did you have periods where you knew for sure there was no magic? I did. Lately, I feel like I may not revisit those times anymore. So isn't it thrilling to feel this life full of power and beauty? To perceive real miracles in everyday life? I always come back to one lesson I don't like-you have to have faith. G.O.D. isn't going to ever make herself provable. I don't understand the purpose of that but maybe it's to keep life interesting? I love Einsteins quote
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
and I'm glad to see what he was talking about.
Peace girl.
Dear Brian,
Yes, I definitely remember times in my life when I felt like there was no magic - they actually felt very similar to what you describe when you've talked about how it is hard to handle the idea of things like chemtrails and the evidence of massive manipulations of greed, violence, oppression, and exploitation.
As a child, around eight years old, all of this seemed to hit me like a ton of bricks - I had absorbed enough of the evening news every day to suddenly take it all in and form a world view that shook my faith in a world of beauty and love. I felt sick, horrified, depressed, and I didn't know where to turn to for comfort. I had recently taken a trip to Disneyland, so I thought that maybe putting in a video tape my parents had purchased from there would be helpful; it was a fun, happy place. But as soon as I put it on, all I could see was greed and commercialization, and I felt even further sickened and horrified.
On that day, I felt betrayed, abandoned, deeply saddened, confused, and afraid. To develop defenses, I became more guarded, cynical, skeptical, and numbed. I tried talking to my mother about it, but at the time she minimized the severity of it and tried to convince me that many of those things wouldn't be my concern. It felt so wrong to me that people could see all of these things that were happening in the world, and yet carry on with their everyday lives and go to sleep at night. So I suppose in response to your question in the other thread, "How can you guys handle it?" - my answer would be, "Because my world was already shattered years ago."
Only in recent years have I returned to a faith in hope, love, and purpose. The Transformation Course has been a journey of reintegration, restoration, and healing for me, and a return to trusting in the possibility of things like everyday miracles, reincarnation, synchronicity, and spiritual gifts. It's only been in the past couple of months that I've opened up enough to explore my soul purpose and learn to be true to my inner self.
Yes, I agree that faith is one of our divine traits, and like everything else, it is something that can be used consciously or unconsciously. I think that we are all demonstrating faith of some kind; sometimes our faith might not be placed where would like, such as demonstrating faith that no one is to be trusted.
These are some things that I am learning to place my faith in:
- we are all interconnected
- spirit continues after death
- every moment offers opportunity for transformation
- duality is but a multifaceted perspective of oneness
- I am here for a purpose
I also love Einstein's quote, thank you for that. It can be easy to lose that sense of awe and wonder for life when it feels that we are following the same routine every day. Thankfully things like the Gathering Spot and The Daily Om are great reminders for me to see how every day and every moment are fresh gifts.
Love, Trish