Dolphins inhabit all oceans of the world; therefore it is reasonable that they appear in many stories of civilizations that populated the continents long time ago. The most famous stories about dolphins mention how they rescued people from the dangers of the sea or how they helped fishers with their activities in return for some of the loot.

These stories are not so far from reality. But some others are fantastic tales related to alternate worlds, ancient legends, temperamental deities and curious anecdotes. All this created a mythology with several legends about these magnificent cetaceans.

THE DOLPHINS IN OLD GREECE

The men of ancient Greece had a collection of myths that survived until the present day. For the Greeks the concept of dolphins was positive, considering it a benevolent animal and its appearance in the wake of the boats as a good omen. Many coins from those times show the image of children, men or gods riding a dolphin.

Respect, admiration and affection: what dolphins have aroused in many human civilizations over time.

SOME KNOWN MYTHS:

– Dolphins were the messengers of Poseidon, the god of the seas.

– Once, some pirates captured the god Bacchus or Dionysus who confused him with a Prince, with the intention to ask for ransom. Dionysus raged and turned the ship’s oars into snakes, which frightened the pirates and made them jump into the sea. However, the god had mercy on them and decided to turn them into dolphins so that from then on they would help men.

Probably this myth caused that many Greeks considered that killing a dolphin was a totally outrageous and reprehensible act.

– The gods Aphrodite and Apollo considered dolphins sacred.

– In the Hymn to Apollo, Homer, the poet, relates that the temple of this god was at the base of Mount Parnassus. In need of priests, he became a dolphin and hijacked a merchant ship, making the winds blow in a way that the ship headed for the Greek coast. The crew then stayed in the new temple and served as priests.

– Who is the child, that appears on Greek coins, which rides on the back of a dolphin?” Apparently, it is Taras, the son of Poseidon. According to the myth, his father sent a dolphin to save him from a shipwreck.

As Greeks associated dolphins with Poseidon, this probably explains why in all the depicts of the sea god is always surrounded by dolphins. In one myth about Poseidon, dolphin messengers were sent to bring him a nymph he loved, who he later married. As a reward, he set the dolphin in the sky as a constellation. And he was regularly accompanied by dolphins among other sea creatures.

Alos Greeks associated dolphins with romance. Aphrodite is often depicted with dolphins, riding them or being accompanied by them.

Dolphins, in Greek culture, were often rescuers of humans, probably because they like to bring things to the surface and, well, because there’s some real evidence that they do indeed purposely rescue people in danger.

DOLPHINS IN MYTHOLOGIES OF OTHER CULTURES

The Minoan civilization, an ancient culture which settled on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, represented the presence of dolphins in their culture. A sample of this is the fresco with dolphins found in the Palace of Knossos that until today remains almost unchanged.

Certainly, the Greek culture has an extensive repertoire of myths that have been passed down through generations, but dolphins have appeared in the histories of many other cultures. For example, in regions of Brazil and the Solomon Islands some parts of the body of dolphins are used for medicines and totems, and for the Hindus, the Ganges river dolphins (Platanista gangetica) have a relation with the god Ganga.

For the ancient Romans, dolphins were in charge of bringing the souls of the dead to the Islands of the Blessed; They related these animals to mystical processes of life, death, and resurrection. Even the Greeks associated these animals with the Assyrian goddess Atargatis, the deity of fertility and the underwater world.

The culture in the age of Christianity is not exempt from these stories either. It is believed that on one occasion St. Martin the hermit was tempted by a libertine woman, and seeing himself about to sin he threw himself into the sea and went to live on an uninhabited island. Some versions indicate that the saint was taken to the shore on the back of a dolphin and others mention that two dolphins transported him after a woman arrived on the island where he lived.

Respect, adoration, and affection are what dolphins have aroused in the human culture which is far more than just interest. Many of their myths agree with the image that is popularly known of them since they have rarely appeared as evil or dangerous beings in these stories. Certainly, dolphins will continue to be present in future stories.

DOLPHINS IN MODERN TIMES

Dolphins have been viewed as somehow magical for millennia by humans. They’re one of the only animals that appear to play, leaping out of the water and doing tricks, and the bottlenose dolphin even seems to grin widely at everything. It was inevitable that such a remarkable animal also generated fantastic mythology that extends through today.

This image of the dolphin continued in myth and legend as the world transformed around them. Byzantine sailors, Arab sailors, Chinese and European explorers, all had tales of dolphins rescuing sailors or ships in trouble. Dolphins could predict calm seas. And a ship accompanied by dolphins was sure to find safe harbor, fair weather, and following seas. It was terrible luck to harm a dolphin, which is evident in the tales of Pelorus Jack, a dolphin described in the late 19th century who guided ships through a particularly treacherous strait off the coast of Tasmania.

Jack would appear as ships neared the canal, and guide them through the safe parts of the water, leaving the ship once it was safely through. One day, a drunk passenger on one ship shot Jack, and of course, he fled. Weeks later, he reappeared to guide ships again, but would never guide that particular ship again. And ultimately, that ship did wreck on the rocks of the strait.

Today, in movies and literature, we have modern legends about dolphins. Almost any website or book about dolphins will speak of their incredible intelligence.

References

Alan Rauch. Dolphin. Reaktion Books, 2013.

Marie-Claire Anne Beaulieu. The Sea as a Two-way Passage Between Life and Death in Greek Mythology. ProQuest, 2008.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/whales/man/myth.html

http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1983/2/83.02.12.x.html

While attempting to photograph any wild animal is often a difficult undertaking. Photographing wild dolphins presents it’s own individual challenges. If you happen to be planning a boat trip or a swim with the dolphins, there are a few things you need to keep in mind to make sure you take advantage of every photographic opportunity.

The most important thing to remember is to let the dolphins approach you. Dolphins are very social creatures and seem to react favorably to interaction with humans, if allowed to do so on their own terms.

Your photographs will be much better if the dolphin is actually in an inquisitive mode. Nobody wants to see photos of dolphins fleeing in panic.

If you’re attempting to shoot the dolphins from a boat, odds are you’re going to end up in rough water at some point.

Remember to brace yourself and your camera equipment so neither you nor your equipment ends up in the water. The motion of the boat, as well as the speed at which dolphins can travel, will require using a fairly high shutter speed on your camera. ASA/ISO 100 or 200 film will help alleviate some of the graininess that will result from the higher shutter setting but achieving a balance between these two comes with practice. A lens filter will help to reduce glare and a motor drive is extremely helpful when the dolphins are extremely active.

A telephoto lens will be necessary as its often difficult to get to close to the dolphins from the boat. The best type of camera for this type of photography is a Single Lens Reflex (SRL) and either a Nikon or Canon body.

If you’re actually lucky enough to participate in a dolphin swim, you’ll want to use wide angle lenses. Dolphins, even the younger ones, are fairly large. and a lens with a narrow angle of view will require more distance to make sure the entire dolphin is included in the frame. Wide angles lenses will provide more control and flexibility with the sharpness and color saturation of the imagen

Obviously, if you are swimming with dolphins, a water proof camera will be needed, but there are many options for that which are not necessarily expensive cameras. You can find a waterproof housing for your own camera, or there are several waterproof cameras now, even digital, at really affordable prices.

If you need a camera for your trip, the recommended stores where I have purchase a cameras online with great results are:

They both have a great selection and prices and they both have great information to help you choose the right camera for your budget. Don’t get too excited! Quite often the experience of just being in the water with the dolphins will be so exhilarating that even the most talented photographer is reduced to simply snapping away with no thought to the actual composition of the photograph.

If you take the time to get in close with a wide angle lens, the resulting photograph will make the subject in the foreground appear disproportionately larger than the background. This technique can produce an amazing image. Changing angles on the dolphin can also add personality to your images. A picture of the dolphin in a side profile as well as one that captures the entire length of the creature can create an interesting collage of finished photographs.

When photographing dolphins, the use of a light meter is essential. Dolphins usually swim close to the surface which will require accurate settings of surrounding light conditions. The use of a strobe as fill lighting will also bring contrast to the dolphins features.

Regardless of how close you can actually get to the dolphin, using a few of the above techniques should guarantee an interesting array of photographs. If you’re patient and take the time to do a little practicing before your trip, you should be able to capture an extremely amazing opportunity with ease.

Ever since Flipper captivated television audiences in the black-and-white sets of the fifties, dolphins have been among the most beloved animal stars. If you’re one fan of dolphins who’d rather watch them on the big screen, there are plenty to choose from.

Television Shows

Besides Flipper, the archetypical motion-picture dolphin, there have been a few other small-screen shows starring dolphins. Dolphin Cove, in 1989, introduced a man and his son and emotionally-disturbed daughter who move to Australia, where the daughter develops a special rapport with two wild dolphins.

Day of the Dolphin

Day of the Dolphin stars George C. Scott and a pair of dolphins his character has trained to speak simple English and perform complex tasks. The dolphin research, though he doesn’t know it, is being funded by a shadowy organization who intend to use the dolphins for nefarious purposes. Though the plot is rather preposterous, the movie does ask an important question about how dolphin research may be exploited.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy In both the book and the movie Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, dolphins are represented as much more intelligent than humans. And though they do their best to warn humans about the coming cataclysm by chirping, squealing, and whatever else they can think of, humans just don’t seem to understand them. And at last the dolphins take flight themselves, leaving the humans to their doom. Though dolphins play a supporting role in the movie, the scenes of dolphins playing in the beginning of the film are wonderful.

Keiko, star of the film Free Willy / Photo courtesy of U.S. federal government.

Dolphins, by IMAX

This movie was made by researchers following dolphins in the wild, a much more strenuous and time-consuming task than studying captive dolphins. The movie covers wild dolphins from the Bahamas to Patagonia, and examines topics such as how they live and travel, how dolphin families and pods form, how they communicate with one another, and how humans have impacted their lives. For anyone interested in dolphins, it’s one of the most fascinating films you can see.

Animated Films

Dolphins also show up in animation, in movies like The Incredible Mr. Limpet. And this may be a better way of including dolphins in film. Though dolphins are incredible creatures which are fascinating to watch, they are also sensitive to the environment. No matter how well we treat captive dolphins, they will see a drop in life expectancy, by some estimations as much as a three-quarters decrease. Before going out to see films including dolphins, think about the effect it has on the dolphins, and ask yourself if it’s worth seeing them if it means they will live in captivity.

And it may be worth it. With films like IMAX’s Dolphins, a secondary benefit is in the education given to people who might otherwise be ignorant about these grand animals. The captivity of a few dolphins may lead to the saving of thousands from death.

Book Review by John Hoopes

I have just finished reading a remarkable novel, The Dolphins of Oceanus by John Hoopes, which has kept me thinking and speculating about dolphins, whales and the ocean, in a way that I have never done, even though I have been a fan and student of dolphin, whale and ocean most of my adult life.

I am old enough to remember John Lilly’s experiments in the 1970s and 80s with dolphins, trying to establish a human-dolphin communication. As I recall, he didn’t ever quite achieve what he’d hoped and eventually gave up the project. But when I read about those experiments in books like The Mind of the Dolphin I felt akin to him in spirit: that is, he was going on the assumption, which I shared, that dolphins had a high order of intelligence, and perhaps, in ways we didn’t yet understand, they could use their large brains in sophisticated ways, comparable to ours, could we but somehow penetrate deeply enough into their psyches to discover that. And I remember a question that kept popping into my mind then: Well, if dolphins really are as intelligent and sophisticated as humans, what do they do with all that great intelligence? How does it manifest in their world? They cannot make material things. They leave no visible, tangible signs of intellectual or artistic creation. What then could it be? I admit, I am not essentially a deeply imaginative person, and I was never able to come up with any speculations that even remotely satisfied me, and I soon gave up speculating.

However, so many years later, when today I’d finished reading this amazing new novel, I knew that someone had finally accomplished, in spades, the imaginative leap that I had not been able to make years ago, and had created a vivid undersea world, full of intelligence and emotion, of spiritual awareness even; and in addition had populated that world with an array of individual dolphins who were all as distinctive and unlike each other as any such collection of humans could be. Quite a feat.

One of our biggest clichés about dolphins and whales, is that they are all gentle, benevolent beings, all apparently living in perfect harmony with each other and with their oceanic environment. The Dolphins of Oceanus also overturns that applecart: there are dolphins and whales we encounter in this novel who have tragic flaws, who can be devious, who intrigue against each other or against the colony for personal gain; there are others noble, spurred by high ideals and capable of great sacrifice for a higher good. In other words, the citizens of this undersea world are as psychologically and spiritually complex and unpredictable as humans. A rich involvement of character results from it.

So this novel has performed a great service for us by making at least a reasonable attempt at answering that important question: Well, assuming their high intelligence, what would their life be like? We as humans need an answer to this. The answer doesn’t have to be perfect, just something that will take us imaginatively inside that hitherto closed door, let us look around inside that amazing room; and then take that information back outside and use it to help reassess our own position on this planet. Do we already have a nearby, great, alien ally?

Something in this novel suggests that the answer to that old, old question—is there anybody like us out there?—could be very near at hand; has been here all the time; we just didn’t know where to look, whom to ask. Not outward and upward and into spectrums of light-year; but right here, down below, into the dark, mysterious depths of our own Oceanus.

You can read free the first several chapters on the author’s website at www.bellamagicbooks.com.

Book Review by Alexie Frize-Williams

dolphin wayIf you ever see a close-up shot of a dolphin, one of the most striking things about it is the huge, permanent grin spread wide across his face. But have you ever stopped to wonder what the creature might have to smile about? What secrets lie behind the intelligent eyes of the animal about which we still know so little? In this beautiful subaquatic tale, Mark Caney provides a glimpse at life through the eyes of the other major civilized race we share the planet with – the dolphins. Aptly blurring fact and the fantastic, the novel is rooted in the author’s intricate research of dolphin behavior, whilst conveying a powerful narrative which masterfully explores some profound questions.

Touches the Sky is a young male dolphin who finds himself caught up in the destructive consequences of man’s impact on his once utopian world. For millennia the dolphins have peaceably thrived in a sophisticated, harmonious existence, following the Way: an ancient belief system, somewhere between a religion and a philosophy. With a complex communication system, playfulness to rival that of humans and unobtrusive intelligence, they have grown perfectly attuned to their world, without the need to improve it, or destroy one another. Now there are alarming developments in the familiar waters, with the confusing din of deafening machinery, brutal over-fishing resulting in food shortages, strange cancers, and many baby dolphins stillborn due to pollution. The darker side of human nature begins to take seed in the receptive dolphin psyche, and a small faction renounces the Way to pursue a savage new lifestyle. Sky must desperately try to avert the disturbing new threat if he is to protect the ancient code and those he loves.

Though the pervasive themes are sombre, the plot is vibrant and fast-paced, snaking in the impressive twists and turns of a beautifully crafted adventure story. The reader is immersed in a stunning underwater world with eloquent scenic descriptions opening the reader’s eyes to a vast and vivid variety of undersea creatures, water temperaments and ocean-scapes. To be enjoyed by readers both young and old alike, the novel may be read simply as an exciting, escapist tale, with three-dimensional characters, touches of humour and beautiful snatches of poetry. But for a deeper reading, the fictive layers can be peeled back to reveal many philosophical, social and moral questions which will leave the reader thinking long after turning the last page. If dolphins are as intelligent as man is gradually learning to realize, what are they using all this intelligence for? (Is there a master agenda?) In evolutionary terms, where did ‘original sin’ arise, and why has it not affected another, so highly developed, species? What causes the fork in the evolutionary pathway which allows or denies a species to be capable of sophisticated communication, emotion, sociability and pleasure?

The most poignant theme of the novel is clearly the shocking, but entirely realistic, devastation to the ocean environment. Human influences on the planet seem to be slowly destroying any hope for posterity, whilst the dolphin Way hinges on the safeguarding of the future through learning from the past. Caney paints a stark picture of human egocentricity and materialism versus the balanced altruism and sustainability of the gentle dolphins. The dolphins eat only what they need to stay alive, to maintain the complex balance of life in the ocean. By training their minds and bodies they can hold their breaths for longer, dive deeper, and explore different levels of consciousness and the subconscious. This existential introspection enables the possibility of approaching a sense of unity with the universal, one of the fundamental tenets of the Way. It also provides an elegant solution to the creatures’ lack of instruments or material objects to record information; a special order of dolphins known as the Starwriters can train their minds to recall vast quantities of information subliminally. Here the author’s creative flair takes wing, and an entire system of societal roles within the dolphin clan is laid out; from Dreamweavers to Calculators, the different gifts of certain zetii (as the dolphins are known) work together to ensure the continuance through each generation, of the creatures’ age old wisdom. One of the most fascinating aspects of this world is that many of the ideas stem from scientific theory, touching upon the realms of astrology, oceanology, biology and medicine.

So if you get the chance to read one novel this year, make it Dolphin Way. Aside from enjoying the vivid brilliance of the underwater world, you might learn something along the way. After all, if we concentrated less on materialistic concerns, the desire to manipulate the environment and cultivate wealth, there would surely be more time for pleasure and to simply enjoy life! Perhaps this is why the dolphins smile – man is caught up in his obstinately self-destructive pursuit of happiness; the dolphins are already there.