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.
SHIHAB RATTANSI, CNN ANCHOR: For the past few weeks, we have been bringing you the moving story of wild solitary dolphin called Jacques. The friendly mammal lived in the highly polluted Port River of Southern Australia.
ASIEH NAMDAR, CNN ANCHOR: The researchers who befriended Jacques say it was these pollutants that abruptly ended his life. Now, a similar fate awaits other dolphins inhabiting waters of the port city of Adelaide.
Melody Horrill has more on how people can learn to ensure the future of solitary dolphins.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MELODY HORRILL, NEWS 10 CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Dr. Bossley's research has continued since Jacques's death in 1993. A few years later, the Australian Dolphin Research Foundation was formed to fund the ongoing study of the Port River dolphins and their environment.
(voice-over): Despite the environmental pressures, the dolphins remain friendly to human visitors, but none of them has come close to interacting the way Jacques did.
I would describe it as a completely unique experience. At the time, it was, you know, it was a daily thing for us, and it was actually a part of our lives. But looking back, it was an amazing thing.
HORRILL: Ironically, the pollution that ended that pleasure by taking Jacques's life is at last being addressed. Government agencies have realized that programs are needed to help industry to clean up its act.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With their -- the new restrictions that the Environmental Protection Agency has imposed on the industries and the attempts to clean up storm water, the removal of that refuse from areas adjacent to the marine environment, in time those things are going to decrease pollution, and one would hope that that would be the case.
HORRILL: Dr. Bossley is campaigning to have the whole area declared a dolphin sanctuary. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe we can even provide a model for the rest of the world of how people can learn to live with a large (UNINTELLIGIBLE) species and (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I think that's a wonderful ambition that we have, and hopefully one day Adelaide will be famous for the fact that we started it all, that dolphins are living with people happily and comfortably all over the world because of what we managed to do here.
HORRILL: Despite the dreams, a new power station has opened on the Port River. The flow of polluted storm water and industrial waste continues. And the dolphins' habitat is being damaged by the loss of sea grass and mangroves.
But perhaps there is cause for hope, as long as people keep showing that they care. The Dolphin Research Foundation runs regular trips, allowing the public to have their own close encounters.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Something really drastic has to be done, and hopefully the implementation of the dolphin sanctuary will go ahead, because it's so important. Nowhere else in the world do we have a city of approximately a million people where we have dolphins living so close to us. It's just so unique, and we have to protect that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I know from a personal perspective that if I had not had that relationship with Jacques that I have had, I don't think I would have appreciated or even cared about to the extent this environment and the other dolphins out here quite as much as I did and still do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We would have had those languid moments of lying with him in the water, it was often lovely and warm here, and you would get close and you would feel him sonoring you, and you would reach out and touch him. And we were so inadequate for that. I got a sense very strongly that he is an entity that knows how to do what I want to do, but I am not able to. He is already looking at me, and luckily for me, I guess, he decided that I was a worthy person to know and interact with.
HORRILL: Around the world, little more than two dozen solitary dolphins have interacted with humans, but Jacques went further than all of them. So the question is, will there ever be another Jacques?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From time to time, there have been dolphins that I thought a relationship could have happened, and I must admit I have hoped that it wouldn't. I have hoped that they will reintegrate themselves, because, you know, in hindsight it's too hard to manage that kind of situation for -- they just become so trusting and so -- so I hope they think we humans are their friends and wonderful.
And unfortunately, you know, not all of us are, and it makes them just so incredibly vulnerable that -- yeah, I would be really hoping that we do not find ourselves in that situation, that if there are any other lonely dolphins out there that that other dolphins will make friends with them and take them away, and we don't have to do it, because it's maybe not good for them. Maybe things will change here in Adelaide. Maybe if Jacques was alive today, people would cherish him and appreciate him and protect him. I would like to think that's what it would come to that situation. But I guess I am not totally confident of it yet.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NAMDAR: Melody Horrill has taken us through Jacques's amazing journey and events that led to his death. I spoke earlier to her about the lessons learned from befriending this unique solitary dolphin. Here is what she had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HORRILL: It's such a unique experience, being able to interact with a solitary dolphin. It happens so rarely, and so rarely do you have a chance to have that interaction without having to feed the dolphin and without having to coax it in.
And I think a few lessons that we learned -- we learned that dolphins are very much like us. You know, they seem to like other dolphins over other dolphins and have a highly structured social system, and we learned I lot about Jacques's communication system. I mean, nobody really knows what a dolphin says when it speaks, but it uses a series of whistles and blows, and eventually we got to know what those were.
So Jacques would come up to the boat, he would blow this huge bubble in the water, and we would knew he was saying "good day." And you know, he would make certain whistles and sonar sounds when you were interacting with him, which over a period of time we began to understand. So, you know, being in such close proximity and sharing such a close relationship with a dolphin taught us a lot about how they communicate -- not just with one another, but with also -- also with us.
NAMDAR: Explain to me the way your relationship started with Jacques. I believe it was 10 years ago?
HORRILL: Yes, it was. I was actually working as a research assistant while I was at university, and I was helping on this project. And Dr. Bossley, head researcher, said, "Melody, I really would like you to meet this dolphin." And the next minute, I was in the water with this completely wild dolphin, and it was the amazing experience. This dolphin just treated me like I was...
NAMDAR: Right off the bat?
HORRILL: Right off the bat, right off the bat, and it was the weirdest feeling, you know, being in water with a totally wild animal. But there was this feeling of trust. I trusted him. I knew that he could not and would not hurt me, and over a period of time he became one of my best friends, and the highlight of my week was going out to visit Jacques. And when he died...
NAMDAR: How often were the visits? HORRILL: About twice a week, usually. And when he finally died, obviously of pollution, it was like someone had taken away my best friend, and he was irreplaceable. I remember just continually crying because he was just -- I was never going to find another Jacques.
And it was not until, you know, several years later that I came across these tapes that we had taken while we were studying Jacques. And I never thought I would be in a position to be a journalist and actually tell his story. And I was looking at these tapes, and I thought, you know, Jacques' story really needs to be told.
And so, it was not until years and years later that I was in a position to be able to put Jacques' story together and finally tell the world, and it has just been an amazing personal experience, and I feel so -- so proud, and it's such an achievement for me. And I hope that people, the world, learned something from Jacques.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
RATTANSI: Melody Horrill with Australia's Network 10.
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