Why we should listen to dolphin 'Voices'
The more you learn about dolphins the more they make you smile … and cry.
They are every bit the gregarious clowns we suppose them to be — joyful, leaping creatures that not only rejoice in riding boat wakes, but bring presents on dates and giggle with abandon. They also are wrenchingly selfless animals, reassuringly touching each others’ fins and bellies when danger approaches, or clustering together to hold up a sick or injured pod mate even at great peril to themselves.
The things we learn in Susan Casey's Voices in the Ocean about dolphins and their singular magic, history, personalities (some aren’t perpetually cheery), patterns, and intelligence (their brains are much bigger than would be expected of an animal their size) are countless. Painstakingly researched and gorgeously written, Voices in the Ocean provides textbook-depth education that is based on Casey’s years of swimming the open seas with dolphins, interviews with leading experts and protectors, and harrowing trips to the nether reaches of the globe where horrific brutalities occur.
Casey transports us through the many truths and myths about dolphins. Yes, they can tell when a woman is pregnant and will show excessive interest in her. No, they don’t necessarily stay with their family for life; they often split off in search of new adventures or companions, “in fluid, constantly changing groups, much like people milling around at a cocktail party” but merge back together for protection or for hunting.
She instructs us in the animal’s amazing transformation from land walker to ocean dweller, and the marvels of its adaptation over the eons. She writes of the many who believe dolphins are aquatic oracles and can share secrets of importance if we will listen. And she offers the latest in research, which includes studies showing the area of the brain that contains empathy is massively large (possibly explaining why dolphins so often help sailors and surfers in jeopardy, and certainly accounting for why they are so attuned to each other’s needs).
She delves deeply into their remarkable capabilities. Their echolocation skills (from ultrasonic clicks that originate in their nasal passages) are so far beyond what man has been able to create through sonar technology that the Navy has conscripted troops of them. Dolphins can also, it has recently been discovered, self-heal the worst wounds through means not understood.
There are touching stories of individual dolphins, including Fungie, who’s lived in Ireland’s Dingle Bay, by his own choice, for decades, reveling in his contacts with the people who revere him. Other dolphins have chosen similar solitary existence near people, but haven’t fared well, falling victim to bullets, boat propellers, spear guns, toxins and jet skis.
The writing is emotional but not emotionally overwrought. Not, that is, until the final chapters when there’s a sudden shift to an almost Geraldo Rivera-esque tone as Casey journeys to some of the worst sites for dolphin confinement and slaughter. It’s jarring, her hour-by-hour recitation of the dangers and horrors.
It is also probably a fair reflection of Casey's metamorphosis as she worked on this project: from dolphin-loving innocent to outraged investigator who saw and learned things so dark and disturbing she was forever changed.
Voices in the Ocean: A Journey Into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins
By Susan Casey
Doubleday, 278 pp.
4 stars out of four
Sharon Peters is author of Trusting Calvin: How A Dog Helped Heal a Holocaust Survivor’s Heart.