CHAPTER TWENTY -THREE
Excitement of my discovery was diluted by a sense of dis-
belief. Everyone since the ancient Greeks has wanted to believe
water-borne mammals could communicate. Claim after claim had
proven to be based on an overactive imagination, or even fraud.
So for now, I chalked up my experience to my hyperactive
imagination and nothing else. Besides, Peter was right I am deaf.
How could I hear anything let alone a whale speaking?
Still and all the impression I got whenever I looked in the eye
of this new whale was one of intelligence and a haunting belief that
he was attempting to communicate. I didn’t feel it was a matter of
him not understanding us, but rather a matter of us not understanding
him. Often throughout my college career, I had read about experts
who equated the intelligence of dolphins and whales with that of
clever dogs and other domestic pets. But there was deep intelligence
in those eyes, not the mindless innocence of a kitten or puppy.
I spent all my free time in or near the new tank. I never felt
the vibrating sensation in my head outside the tank, but when I was
in the water proper and my head was submerged, I did feel the puls-
ing vibration like the touching of a tuning fork. Oh, how I wanted to
believe that in some small part I was truly hearing for the first time,
but the sensation was not sound. It was vibration.
Late one night when the park had closed, I again stood on
the observation platform and stared into the translucent, black eyes
of the whale. There was that depth, that feeling of soul, of great
intelligence, of compassion.
“What are you?” I signed, “some mythical, magical monster-
-or just a figment of my imagination? Come on, big guy, speak to
me.” Seemingly in response the whale suddenly lunged forward,
sending a great cascade of water sloshing over the platform. The
rush was so great that I lost my footing and fell bone-jarringly onto
my butt – my legs extended in front of me over the water. Then time
all but stopped as I watched the great, sharp-toothed mouth of
the Orca open and clamp down, albeit though gently, on my feet.
Knowing the strength of those jaws, I realized it would only be a
moment before my feet would become a snack for this killer whale.
My hands braced on the platform I tried to pull back hoping against
hope that he would simply let go. But, as I pulled the whale simply
yanked me into the water.
Being deaf, I don’t know how much noise I made, but my
mouth was open wide and I was forcing a lot of air out in a panicked
attempt at communication. Remarkably, as I hit the water, the whale
released my feet, and I sputtered to the surface, gulping air on top
of the water I had already swallowed. I spun myself around like a
top in the water, looking for my assailant, prepared to defend myself
to the end. How I would ward off a multi-ton attacker I had no idea,
but I wasn’t going roll over and play mini-meal.
I spit the water from my mouth, as finally my eyes cleared.
There, not four feet away, was the Orca, complacently watching me.
Certain that he was prepared for another attack; I began to gently
back-paddle to the edge of the tank. But as I moved, he moved.
Only 20 feet and I would be within arm’s reach of the platform and
safety. I backed up farther, and would have made my escape save
for one of the dolphins who interceded itself between me and the
platform. Gently but forcefully the dolphin nosed me back toward
the whale.
Unbelievably the dolphin and the whale were working in con-
cert. Never in all my studies had I ever read that dolphins helped
killer whales in their feeding. Great! This was my first major dis-
covery as a biologist, but the knowledge would never be consumed
by my peers rather I would. My scientific discovery and my body
would be digested in a more bizarre manner in the belly of a very
intelligent whale.
I turned to the side and started to swim parallel to the dolphin
at my back and the whale in my face, but another of the dolphins
reared from the water and I was blocked again. Trapped as I was,
the only avenue of escape seemed to be down. I dove quickly
planning to swim beneath the dolphin behind me when I felt deep,
rhythmic vibrations in my inner ear. The buzzing was gentle and
oddly soothed my feelings of fear. This didn’t seem to be the cry
of a blood-hungry whale about to devour his first manwich, his first
femburger.
I surfaced; confused but still very much alive. The whale had
quietly submerged, and as my head rose from the water, so did his.
It was a standoff. Suddenly, my attention was diverted to the other
side of the tank and the welcome sight of Peter’s lopsided grin. He
crudely signed, “Are you okay?”
I turned and looked at my attackers. None were threatening,
but neither were they moving back. I carefully raised my arms from
the water and signed, “I thought I was in danger, but I am now safe,
for the moment. If I look like I am about to become a meal, get
me out of here!” I turned back to the whale, whose eyes seemed to
twinkle in the artificial lights of the marina park. He slowly dropped
his massive head back under the water, and the dolphins did the
same. I waited a moment or two, and then they all popped back to
the surface. They slowly sank again, and again I waited. Again,
they bobbed to the surface in unison. Peter looked at me, question-
ingly now, with a formidable spear gun cradled in his arm–cocked
and ready.
I hand-spoke to him to stay where he was but to keep the
spear gun handy. Inwardly, I was very relieved that he was there. If
you are about to give your life for science, literally as lunch, there’s
always a sense of relief that someone will at least know where you
have disappeared. I turned back to the center of the tank.
The process of the bobbing mammals happened three more
times, and I swear the whale and dolphins were getting frustrated
that I didn’t understand what was going on. Once again, in uni-
son, they dropped below the surface, and again I was alone with
the ripples. I looked to Peter, who was now nervously watching
this odd behavior from the platform, gun at the ready. He shrugged
his shoulders and shook his head. He had no more idea than did I
about what was going on.
Suddenly, I felt a tug at my foot, and before fear or alarm, I
was suddenly drawn beneath the water back to my lead position in
the food chain. I was a bit more prepared this time, and at least my
mouth was closed. The grip was not uncomfortable, but I definitely
was being held under the water. But why? Once again, the rhythmic
vibrations began, and I was soothed. Then the pulsation stopped.
My leg was released, and I popped to the surface like a cork.
With me came my errant new playmates, who watched expec-
tantly. Peter urgently signed from the platform, “What’s going on?
Why are they pulling you under the water?”
I returned in sign, “I don’t know what’s happening, but for
some odd reason, they, want me under the water.” I thought for a
moment as I floated in the water–me watching them watching me.
There was a device we had been using called a tonal analyzer and
with the aid of microphones installed around the pool it recorded
and printed all sounds to a paper graph. I signed to Peter to turn on
the machine and begin recording.
When he was ready, I again dropped beneath the surface of
the water. Sure enough, the whale and dolphins did the same. And,
as before, the pulsation came, wrapping their soothing arms around
me. Again, when the vibrations stopped, I surfaced quickly and
signed to Peter for the reading. He disappeared for a moment and
then reappeared to sign that other than standard background chirp-
ing, there was nothing recorded.
The dolphins merrily bobbed their heads. Once again, I
slipped beneath the surface, and again could feel the vibrations.
When they stopped I rose to the surface, and as before, a perplexed
Peter signed that there was no extraordinary sounds. What was
this? What was happening? Had I lost my mind?
The dolphins and whale moved closer, but there was nothing
in their movement that I perceived as threatening. If anything, there
was a sense of bonding. I signed to Peter to throw me a pair of gog-
gles and a snorkel. He was gone but a minute and then lobbed the
gear high in the air. With a splash they landed neatly in front of me.
I pulled the mask on and bit down on the mouthpiece. All secured,
I submerged. The dolphins and whale, satisfied that I was under to
stay and not about to pop up again, also submerged. We floated
there, suspended between two alien worlds. As before, my inner ear
rang with the rhythmic buzzing. It stopped, then started again, and
there was a definite pattern to it.
One of the dolphins separated from the group and swam
close to me. Without thinking I reached out in the water and
touched the side of its head. Then, slowly, the rhythm of the buzz-
ing changed. This process was repeated over and over until it sud-
denly dawned on me that the rhythms were distinct. At the same
time, the dolphin was arching its body, turning into himself. I think
I was finally beginning to connect the dots. Was the vibration I was
feeling the dolphin word for dolphin?
Shocked though I was, I carefully signed the word, “Dolphin,”
and then touched it again.
The whale and the other dolphins in chorus repeated the
rhythmic pattern, “Dolphin. Dolphin. Dolphin.”
One by one I pointed to the other dolphins and signed over
and over, “Dolphin! Dolphin! Dolphin!”
The dolphins in turn twisted their heads back and repeated
the pulsation. They were indentifying themselves as dolphins.
They speak!
They all watched as I first pointed to and then signed for one
thing and then another in the tank. Then the rhythmic buzzing
would translate, and I would be taught the equivalent word in their
language. Language–how quickly I changed from calling it buzzing
and vibration in my inner ear to language. Over the next hour or
so, through trial and error, they taught me the simple words for the
water and life itself. They taught me the word “dryside”—everything
above the water that they called “life.” They taught of the “feath-
ered-furies,” the seagulls that fly on the winds of the dryside.
And, oh yes, they don’t call us man or human beings. They call us
the “sandwalker,” it that walks on two fins on the dryside.
They taught me so much in a short time, but it was only a
single grain of sand on the most expansive of beaches. Whales
and dolphins have been on this earth longer than man, and, I began
to understand that they have a recorded history. A history that has
been passed on from generation to generation since the beginning
of time. They call this history the Song of the Sea, a song that
sandwalker does not sing. Oh, that man was not such a slave to
labor-saving devices! In our cleverness, we forget to intimately re-
member how we got here. The mammals of the sea had been trying
to communicate with us for hundreds of thousands of years. We just
didn’t know how to listen.
I drug myself up onto the platform and excitedly signed to
Peter, “Did you get all of that?”
He looked at me, perplexed, his face screwed up. “Get all
of what?”
“The last two hours, my conversations, my first day in
school,” My fingers danced in the air as I laughed and danced
about. “My conversations with–excuse me–the sandwalker’s first
conversation with his intellectually superior and older cousins, the
whale and dolphin.”
Peter stared at me intently, concern overriding his normal
sarcastic wit. “Are you okay? Come here and take a look at
the readouts.”
I grabbed a towel and walked around the tank to the analyzer.
I must have looked quite the site, sopping wet in my clothes and
a snorkel and goggles strapped to my head. I examined the tapes
expecting to see a wide, pulsing graph showing a variety of modula-
tion. Instead, I found only modest and subtle rises and falls in the
graphs. Nothing out of the ordinary. “This can’t be right,” I signed.
Impatiently, I fussed with the machine, but still the analyzer showed
that neither the whale nor the dolphins had made any recordable
sound at all.
Peter gently spun me around, “Look, Doc, the tape even
shows the minor fluctuations of your motions in the water as you
were making all those bizarre signings. I watched you signing un-
der the water . . . the dry side, and sand walker and feathered fury?
What did that all that mean?”
I was still staring intently at the ribbons of graph paper. “None
of their conversations show? Nothing?”
He grabbed me firmly by the shoulders and turned me until we
were face to face. He slowly mouth spoke, “Sharon, read my lips.
There was nothing to record. You were underwater, signing to the
whale and the dolphins. They didn’t respond. They floated be-
neath the water like inflatable pool toys and watched you sign ob-
scure word combinations like dry, side, fury, feathered, waters, and
life. I swear to you, they didn’t chirp or squeak anything they hav-
en’t always done in their delightfully stupid animal way. You must
have bumped your head and have a minor concussion or some-
thing. Come on, let me drive you to the emergency room. Have
someone take a look at you.”
I shrugged off his conciliatory hands on my shoulders. “I
don’t need the hospital. I know what I heard,” I declared.
He turned his head from side to side. “Listen to yourself,” he
said patiently. “You are deaf, stone-deaf since birth. You wouldn’t
know the difference between the sound of a splash in the water and
the wailing of a siren.”
Tears welled from my eyes in frustration. I knew what I had
felt in the water. I knew what I had heard deep within my inner ear.
True, maybe it was not sound or what sound should possibly be
like, but I heard it! I felt it! They spoke with me. Shaken to my
very core, I meekly allowed Peter to take me to a Doc in the Box
not far from the park. Numb, I barely remember the doctor telling
me that I had suffered some form of traumatic shock and was
hallucinating.
I was not crazy. I had suffered no trauma other than the
powerful shock of new-found knowledge and my amazing discov-
ery. They did speak! The dolphins and the whale all spoke! It
had to be real.
Peter took me back to the duplex and mother-henned me
with a cup of hot coffee. Again, I acquiesced to his demands. I
slipped into a robe, and sat quietly at the kitchen table sipping from
the steaming cup while he silently stared at me. Satisfied that I
was all right, he left. I watched as he pulled out of the driveway in
his pick-up, then I put the cup in the sink. I paced about the house
frustrated by what I thought I had experienced. I had to know. Still
dressed in my robe, I walked the few blocks back to the marina and
the whale.
The night security guards were amused at my dress, but be-
cause I had often come in the middle of the night to make observa-
tions, they didn’t question my entry. I rushed back to the tank, robe
flapping about my legs, my still-bare feet stinging as they slapped
the walkways in hurried determination.
All my doubts were smoothed away when the whale reared his
mighty head above the edge of the tank, and, once again, I looked
into his great eye. Anyone who looks into the eye of a whale or a
dolphin has to see the depth of soul and intelligence that is there.
Without thought, I leaped, robe and all, back into the tank. I signed,
“Dolphin . . . dolphin,” and ducked my head beneath the water.
But all was still. I bobbed from the water, dragging deep
mouthfuls of night air into my tortured lungs. I signed, “Whale . . .
whale.” Once again, I plunged my head beneath the water. I waited
and waited, but the whale sat motionless, staring with those great,
unblinking eyes. And the water was silent.
Crap! It was a dream.
Never have I felt so let down. Never have I felt so defeated!
I stood shoulder-deep in the water with tears mixing and mingling
with the dripping saltwater from my hair. I don’t know how long I
was in the water but eventually strong hands reached down and
grabbed me under my arms and lifted me onto the training platform.
I collapsed, sobbing at the edge of the pool. There was Peter, again
kneeling to console me, and also there, the hallucination of all hal-
lucinations, Dr. Lambert.
“Shar-oon,” he mouth-spoke, “Don’t think this little episode
will get you out of work tomorrow. Hee, hee! Though I kind of like
the sound of it: Deaf Girl Listens to Whale Speak. It’s got a kind
of ring to it. Twofin, take her home and dry her off before she com-
pounds this insanity with pneumonia.” With that, he waddled into
the night, back to whatever rock he slept under.
“Come on,” lip-spoke Peter, as he helped me to my feet, “you
just need some rest.” As I shuffled away from the tanks, I looked
back, and there were four heads lifted above the concrete edge,
watching silently.
Like an invalid, I was led out of the marina and into the pas-
senger seat of Peter’s truck, which was still damp from my last ride
and soon to be wetter still from my sopping robe. “If I had known
that I was going to be moving mermaids,” he signed, smiling broad-
ly, “I would have gotten plastic seat covers. I feel like I’m driving a
goldfish bowl.”
I shook my head and laughed. How foolish I was. It was all
just a bump on the head, an odd dream caused by a lonely whale
that simply wanted to play with my foot.
I slept that night wrapped in odd dreams of whales and dol-
phins writing me letters and then denying they had written them.
I woke later, confused, not knowing if I had dreamed it all or only
part. The sight of my dripping robe and the pool of water on the
carpet forced me, in a quantum leap, back to reality. I threw the
quilt back over my head and groaned. Lambert was there! I would
never live it down. By now, there would be a reader board out front,
entreating people to buy tickets to view the newest exhibit . . . me!
Hours later, I staggered from bed and slurped the now-cold
coffee Peter had made the night before. I took an ice-cold shower,
got dressed, and was just walking out of the house when Peter’s
pick-up squealed into my driveway. He charged up the walkway
and blasted into the house. Steeled for the ribbing to come, I was
shocked when he signed, “Get dressed! There is an emergency up
the coast. Lambert has loaned us to help.”
“What happened?”
“A massive pod of Orcas are beaching themselves,” Peter
replied. “Lambert took a helicopter. Thinks he might snag a
free whale.”