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Dolphin Healing from Afar
My dolphin trail began nearly thirty years ago, when on vacation off the Isle of Man, in the Irish Sea. I was on a scuba-diving holiday with a close friend. We were both heads of different medical research laboratories, studying the brain and the central nervous system. Little did I know that this holiday would provide an unforgettable inspiration for new research and something that would completely change my life.
In the harbour of Port St. Mary, we met a dolphin who had become friendly with the local divers. He was a large, mature male bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and was referred to as “Donald.” When I had previously founded the Oxford Underwater Research Group in 1963, one of our aims was to find ways to reduce some of the hazards of scuba diving. During their evolution from land mammals, dolphins had overcome the problems we faced and become superbly adapted to life in the sea. They did not suffer from the bends or nitrogen narcosis. Furthermore they had brains that were as large, more highly evolved, and some thirty million years older than those of humans. So when I first heard about Donald, I immediately started to think of the dolphin as a potential experimental animal. However, that attitude was dispelled the minute I got into the water with him. Instead, I felt like the experimental animal. All thoughts of scientific research flew out of my head as we started to play together in the water. Life was one long game for this dolphin.
The story of how my relationship with Donald unfolded was the subject of several books 1 and a major documentary.2 The television film recorded the remarkable relationship I was able to establish with Donald, who was about three and a half meters long, weighed approximately 230 kilograms, and was totally free to swim away at any time. What was extraordinary about our friendship was that it was his choice. There was no way I could swim after Donald if he decided to go somewhere else, which he often did. This gave rise to an interesting change of attitude on my part with regard to the studies I tried to conduct with him. I had to accept that it was the dolphin who was in control - not me.
One outcome of meeting Donald was that I gave up orthodox medical research and devoted myself to finding out what it is about dolphins that give them such a special place in our hearts and minds. Toward this goal I founded the non-profit International Dolphin Watch (IDW) in 1978. The main aim of IDW was to observe and protect dolphins and to gain greater insight into their behaviour in the wild. My books3 and films,4 together with the rapid growth of sports diving in the 1970S and 19805, have resulted in many more encounters with dolphins in their natural environment.5 Some dolphins are taking the initiative and following Donald’s example. They deliberately seek out the company of divers. This enables studies of free wild dolphins to be conducted in ways that would have been impossible before. We now refer to such dolphins as Ambassador Dolphins. These Ambassador Dolphins are directly responsible for strengthening the human-dolphin bond that has existed for over 2,000 years but was confined to surface swimmers in earlier times.
My work - which is really better described as play - with friendly, solitary dolphins led to an amazing discovery. When the film I helped to make about a dolphin we called Percy off the coast of Cornwall in England was shown on television,6 the BBC was inundated with mail. Many of the letters were from viewers who suffered from depression. They reported that the film had lifted their spirits. Soon afterward, IDW initiated a research project entitled Operation Sunflower. The seeds for this were sown when my companion commented that a man who had suffered from chronic depression for twelve years had “blossomed like a sunflower” following an encounter with a wild dolphin. The aim of the investigation was to see if dolphins could help those afflicted with clinical depression.
The research was conducted and filmed with a solitary dolphin off the coast of Ireland.7 The data we gathered did not fulfil the strict criteria for a proper clinical trial. Nonetheless, it provided convincing evidence that dolphins could help people diagnosed as depressives.
But the success of this study posed a major problem. An estimated one person in ten in the Western world is expected to need some form of psychiatric help during his or her lifetime. Thus, in Britain alone, there were potentially five million people who might want to swim with a dolphin. Taking even a tiny fraction of these people out into the sea to swim with dolphins was clearly impossible. A search was therefore started to find a method of reproducing the healing essence of dolphins. The conventional way of doing this was to produce a dolphin “pill.” But because no direct chemical interactions were taking place, what possible form could such a pill take?
The Australian Aborigines had the answer.
I discovered that, with the aid of music, they could take a listener into a mental state akin to that of an encounter with a dolphin. I was also fortunate enough to hear a recording, made in Australia, called Dolphin Dreamtime. When I first listened to the tape, in the dark while floating in a pool, I had an extraordinary, out-of-body experience. I had the sensation of water flowing across my body as I swooped into the depths. I was a dolphin. I knew what it was like to be a dolphin. The heavy feeling that had prompted me to go for a swim evaporated in a flash.
So I had my pill - an audio pill - that would take the listener on a sound journey into the world of the dolphins.
Through IDW, the Dolphin Dreamtime cassette was made available on a random basis. Each cassette was accompanied by a questionnaire that was returned to me in confidence. Analysis of the first responses by the Applied Psychology Unit of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge in 1990 was sufficiently encouraging for the trial to be extended. A twelve-page statistical analysis conducted by Richard Pearl in the Department of Psychology at Swansea University of the 173 responses received up to 1994 indicated that over 70 percent of those listening to Dolphin Dreamtime benefited from the experience.
Dolphin Dreamtime (now also available as a CD from the Dolphin Shop) has become established as a useful tool in psychiatric wards. In addition to helping those diagnosed with clinical depression, Dolphin Dreamtime is finding ever-widening applications. These range from post-operative trauma to tension release in prisons. A physician uses it to help him deal with his own disability: myalgic encephalomyelitis. Another doctor listens to Dolphin Dreamtime to counteract her insomnia - especially when she is on call during the night.
Listening to the tape or CD is a very benign form of treatment So far no unpleasant side effects have been reported. Children respond especially well to Dolphin Dreamtime, and many now use it for the release of tension before examinations.
Probably because they are so spontaneous and playful, dolphins have an extra special relationship with youngsters. This became abundantly clear to me in 1974, when I had the truly magical experience of seeing Donald scoop my thirteen-year- old son Ashley onto his head and give the boy a ride around the harbour of Port St. Mary on the Isle of Man. Ashley was jubilant. When he told his friends, they were amazed. It changed his life. It made him even more aware of the importance of caring for wildlife - especially dolphins.
That experience led me to the idea of creating a make-believe dolphin that would appeal directly to children and the childlike spirit that most adults harbour but do not always admit to. The advantage of this strategy is that I can put the dolphin in situations, based on real-life experiences, that show the joy they could bring to humans. At the same time, it can reveal their vulnerabilities and how important it is for humans to care for dolphins and treat them respectfully.
I chose the name Dilo for my fictional dolphin. This made-up name I hoped would be acceptable in all parts of the world, especially in countries where there was scant knowledge of dolphins and little regard for their well-being. Through my Dilo stories, I also want to raise awareness of the need to keep the oceans of the world in a healthy state in order that dolphins and all other sea life can survive and flourish.
My books about Dilo have been translated into many languages, including Chinese and Japanese. Through Dilo I encourage young people around the world to become Web Warriors. Using the World Wide Web and e-mail, even severely disabled children can lobby politicians and demand changes in international laws that will protect dolphins.
In the first book,8 Dilo’s mother brings up her baby alone, and they become best friends. The young dolphin’s curiosity gets him into many amusing situations. After his mother dies, caught in a fishing net, Dilo knows her spirit is always around him. At night he sees her outlined in the stars.
Sally Galotti, an exceptionally gifted artist who has worked for the Walt Disney Organisation in Italy, the United States, and England, has illustrated two of my Dilo books.9 One of our aims is to make a full-length movie with Dilo as the central character. However, the BBC is now looking into the possibility of creating an animated cartoon series about Dilo for television.
When Sally painted pictures of Dilo on the walls of a hospice in Romania, where the children were dying from AIDs-related illnesses, both the staff and the patients showed astounding positive behavioural responses to her joyful images. The effect was so profound that Sally decided to dedicate the next years of her life to applying her consummate artistic skills to helping sick children. She is now decorating the walls of children’s hospitals throughout Italy with pictures of Dilo on the basis that the sense of fun and release from fear and stress they engender make young patients more responsive to treatments of all kinds.
In ancient Greece, it was believed that drowned sailors were transformed into dolphins and that dolphins carried the souls of the dead into the next world. Having seen the benefits that Dilo can bring to dying children, Sally and I are now working on ways in which Dilo can help terminally ill children and their loved ones come to terms with death. The most powerful image we have produced in this respect shows Dilo at night looking up into the sky and seeing his mother outlined in the stars.
The use of stories and images to depict the unique connection between humans and dolphins is not new, of course. Many of them have been passed down through the generations. One such story is told by the Chumash Indians, who lived on the coast and offshore islands of south-central California. They were told not to look down when they crossed the Rainbow Bridge to the mainland. Those who could not resist the temptation fell off the bridge into the sea, where they were transformed into dolphins.
The legend of Anon being saved by a dolphin and ferried ashore is depicted in a sculpture made about 2,500 years ago. The story was reported by the Greek historian Herodotus in 450 B.C. and has been retold many times since. Recently it provided the basis for an opera, Arion and the Dolphin, performed by the English National Opera.’10
Sally is also working with me on the Dilo Dolphin Dome Project in association with Trevor Goldsmith, fisherman, sculptor, and genius designer of high-speed boats. Between us we are using art, science, and the latest technology to create interactive dolphin-like experiences from film of wild dolphins and fantasy cartoon images of dolphins. The aim of the project is to bring joy and healing into human lives especially to children with severe disabilities from deprived backgrounds. ft is our intention to build a Dilo Dolphin Dome that can be disassembled and taken to different sites around the world where there are children with special needs, especially in impoverished countries like Romania.
I now propose to build on these achievements and extend the research of Operation Sunflower with an investigation into the role dolphins can play in improving literacy. I do so on the basis that learning a language involves developing and reinforcing mental processes that can be stimulated and improved by real and imaginary dolphins. The idea for conducting this research arose from the numerous unsolicited letters I have received, mostly from highly literate children, telling me how much they have enjoyed the Dilo Stories. Mixed with them were reports that Dilo’s antics were giving children with learning difficulties encouragement to read.
This observation was reinforced by the Dilo Publication Project 2000, which culminated in publication of Dilo and the Treasure Hunters with the help of a group of 9th grade students.11 When the students took copies of the book to a local elementary school, they successfully stimulated 4th grade pupils of varied abilities willingly to read out loud. This caused me to wonder if this was achieved as a result of the enthusiasm of the high school students alone, or did the fact that Dilo was a dolphin play a role? I now believe that it was a combination of both, acting synergistically. I realise that quantifying the contribution of the two separate components (the teacher and the teaching material) would be difficult. Nonetheless, I drafted a research protocol.
Hazel Smelt, a special educational needs co-ordinator, undertook a pilot study with 7th grade students with reading difficulties. It was an immediate success. So much that students who were not involved wanted to know why they were excluded. They asked for Dilo to be introduced into their English lessons.
Since then a full research program, the Dolphin Education Research Project, has been set in motion. The aim of this project is to provide sound scientific evidence to support the introduction of dolphin stories and dolphin-related activities into the teaching of English. The ultimate objective is to help children of all abilities to attain their full potential - especially those who find learning English difficult. In addition, the project aims to create awareness of dolphins and their environment and the need to protect them. This in turn has led to a holistic approach to education in which I have taken my lead from the dolphins. Namely, that learning should involve parents and be fun for the students and their tutors.
My latest book12 has taken me back to my medical/scientific roots. In it I have analysed the evidence for the power of dolphin imagery to stimulate the human mind. I have paid particular attention to the so-called Indigo children, who want to change the world and can be very disruptive. I also look at alternative ways of managing the five million children in the United States who are medicated daily with the drug Ritalin (the long-term side-effects of which are unknown) to control their attention-deficiency disorders.
When I met Donald in 1974 and gave up orthodox medical research, I had no idea where my search for the magic of dolphins would lead me. It has taken me around the world many times. I have journeyed on a square-rigged sailing ship down the Barrier Reef in Australia where I have been with dolphins and humpback whales. My quest has led me into the mysteries of traditional Chinese medicine and life in a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. ‘Where it will go from here I do not know. It seems my dolphin trail still has a long way to go. But with an awakening awareness of the power of dolphins to heal from afar, the limits seem boundless.
NOTES
- Horace Dobbs, Follow a Wild Dolphin (London: Souvenir Press, 1977; rev. ed. 1990); Save the Dolphins (London: Souvenir Press, 1981); and Follow the Wild Dolphins (New York: St. Martins Press, 1982).
- “Ride a Wild Dolphin” (YTY UK); available from the Dolphin Shop
- Horace Dobbs, Classic Dives of the World(Sparkford: Oxford Illustrated Press, 1987); The Magic of Dolphins (Guildford: Lutterwortb Press, 1984); Tale of Two Dolphins (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987); Dance to a Dolphin’s Song (London: Jonathan Cape, 1990); and Journey into Dolphin Dreamtime (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992).
- “A Closer Encounter” (Channel 4, UK) and “Bewitched by a Dolphin” (HTY, UK).
- Melanie Parker, At-a-Glance Guide to Where in the World You Can Have a Dolphin Encounter (North Ferriby: Watch Publishing, 2001).
- “Eye of a Dolphin” (BBC TV, UK).
- “The Dolphin’s Touch” (TVS, UK).
- Horace Dobbs, Dilo and the Call of the Deep (North Ferriby: Watch Publishing, 1994)
- Horace Dobbs and Sally Galotti, Dilo e ii richiamo degli abissi (Vicenza: Edizioni il punto d’incontro, 1997); Horace Dobbs and Sally Galotti, Potere magico di Dilo (Milan: Parole di Cotone, 1999).
- Horace Dobbs, Dolphin Healing (London: Piatkus, 2000).
- Horace Dobbs, Dilo and the Treasure Hunters (North Ferriby: Watch Publishing 2000).
- Horace Dobbs, IDEAL (Integrated Dolphin Education and Learning): A New Gate-way to Literacy (awaiting publication).
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