THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
OCTAVIA NASR, CNN ANCHOR: No other marine mammal has a greater ability to bond with people than dolphins. These sea creatures possess impressive social skills that often rival those of humans.
SHIHAB RATTANSI, CNN ANCHOR: One dolphin is the focus of a six- part series on our program. In the third part, Network 10's Melody Horrill takes us deeper into the world of Jacques, who's become a valued member of a community in Southern Australia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MELODY HORRILL, NETWORK 10 CORRESPONDENT: Last week we continued the tragic story of Jacques, a wild, lonely dolphin who formed an extraordinary bond with a small group of people, including myself. Jacques was an orphan, a solitary dolphin that lived in highly- polluted waterway in South Australia. His home lay in the shadow of the state's biggest power station.
As our friendship with Jacques developed, we wondered how we could help him reintegrate back into dolphin society, so he could make friends with other dolphins for the first time in his life. Which brings us to the third part of our documentary on Jacques's life, "A Dance With A Dolphin."
(voice-over): The world has very few solitary dolphins, but Jacques fell into an even more exclusive category. He chose to interact with humans without the enticement of a free meal. The group that befriended hitch was a select one, and to this day, we can't believe how lucky we were.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was one occasion where I swear I beat him out of 20 meters.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's in your imagination.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On occasions we would be lying on the surface of the water and he would disappear and you would be lying there looking down into the water with your snorkel on with your mask on. Then this torpedo shape would come hurdling out from the depths and you knew, if he keeps going he will go straight through me, but he never did.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I remember jumping in for the first time with Jacques and thinking I don't believe it, I'm swimming with a wild dolphin and he's accepting me unconditionally, I'm not having to feed him. He wants to be with me; he wants to interact with me. And thinking how absolutely amazing that was, even at the time. As I look back on it now, I -- that's sense of amazement is still there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I remember my job as a public servant to come and play with the dolphin.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the disappointment we would feel if we would turn up and he didn't, as well. It's the first thing that we looked for every morning was Jacques.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we left, as things went normally the way they did, we would have some encounter with Jacques and there would be time maybe time for some play, and then you go out and do the real work of meeting proper dolphins. By that stage he had transcended the notion of being a dolphin in my mind. And had become -- he wasn't Jacques the dolphin.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was Jacques the friend.
HORRILL: As Jacques through Bossley's videotapes confirmed, our friend Jacques loved to play games. One of his favorites was fetch the paddle.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Quite remarkable.
HORRILL: Jacques even helped (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to invent a river version of (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It evolved into a system where we would hold the paddle up in the air, one other end, and Jacques would originally try to take the paddle down. But then he worked that very quickly, much quicker than any dog would do that, a much easier way to do that was to take one of us out of the equation. And he realized that once we were in the water, flopping around like us hopeless humans do in the water, that he had the advantage. And so, that was purely funny.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was pure joy. He was such a joyful creature. I mean, we could come down here feeling down in the dumps about a number of things and we would leave, just happy. He was so playful and so interactive and so connected with us. And that -- it was uncanny that that level of connection with a creature who was completely wild.
HORRILL: And Jacques seemed to care for us every bit as much as we did for him. If he saw our feet touching the bottom, it seemed to worry him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He is nudging it.
DR. MIKE BOSSLEY: If it was like another dolphin and you touching the bottom, you were in trouble, so he was trying to lift us (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the bottom so you were floating, which is what a dolphin should be doing.
HORRILL: From that mutual care and companionship, grew what could only be called love. Steve expressed it perhaps best of all one day with a spontaneous kiss.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's almost as though at that moment we compromised. We approached each other. He was so -- I was talking and almost like we both agreed, that neither of our communications systems would work, and we had to invent something else, and there was this close physical contact of mouth to mouth. It was a very light and tender moment. It felt -- it was a lot of feeling.
HORRILL: And others shared equally tender moments.
We realized we were being spoiled by enjoying such a friendship, and then it dawned us: maybe we can use it to help Jacques overcome the problem, which had plagued him all his life.
BOSSLEY: What we had to do to get him to socialize with other dolphins was to lead him out, and he got to the right speed in the boat, he would follow along behind, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), holding our hand as we went in sort of a figurative way out into the water, where there were other dolphins as well.
And hopefully, eventually, he'd be confident enough to move out there himself and his growing integration into dolphin society, would also give him more confidence. That actually happened in the end as well.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We felt we had been part of a process of him breaking that cycle of loneliness.
HORRILL (on camera): Next week we will take a look at the hazards that Jacques and all the other dolphins must face on a daily basis.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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