Communicating with Dolphins II

The Ultimate Joy of Being

Communicating with Dolphins II

Communication on a Subconscious Level

On Thursday last week, something very strong inside kept me thinking about what’s always been very close to my heart… and then write an article about it: Communication with Dolphins.

Thursday was a stormy, cold and darkish winter day down here close to the famous ‘Cape of Storms’ at the tip of  South Africa.

But there was something else. It was something I observed in the Atlantic Sea that I can see very well from where I am sitting at my PC, even right now. There was a whole array of abstract waves and splashes towards Kommetjie, slightly different in colour than the rest of the darkgrey waters on that day, often running crosswise against the huge surf rolling towards Noordhoek Beach… and topped by lots of foam.  It did not look normal.

My gaze continuously wandered back… where it was banned to the same weird scenario. I mentioned it when we were preparing the Ycademy May 2009 Seminar. However, explaining something in optical terms – and especially while focusing on the complex matter under discussion -, excludes the extremely weird feeling that definitely went with this… and that compelled me later that day to dive into the spiritual waters where man and dolphins – or whales – merge. . .

Little did I know then of what was lying ahead…

Communication on a Conscious Level

On Saturday, just before our Ycademy May 2009 Seminar was to start,  friends summoned me to help at Kommetjie Beach where – at that time – 40 whales, many of them pregnant females and calves, had beached themselves. They were whales we don’t normally see here, not Southern Right nor Orcas…

First they were falsely identified as Pilot Whales… and finally correctly as false Killer Whales (Pseudorca crassidens), who are one of the larger members of the oceanic dolphin family (Delphinidae). They can become up to 6 metres long and weigh up to 3,5 tonnes. See the picture on Wikipedia to the left here!!!

40!

I was under shock!

This kind of mass beaching has never happened here before and noone was prepared nor equipped for it.
I had often had ‘live contact’ and what never failed to fascinate me was how fast, flexible and powerful these elegant navigators are. So why should they end up throwing themselves on Kommetjie beach?

One Mission

Whatever the reason, there was the Seminar and I could not leave… just connect on another level while seeing part of the beach at a distance and masses of people streaming there – to an extent that the law enforcement division had to close off the area to allow the dedicated South African rescue teams, National Sea Rescue Institute volunteers, veterinarians and marine scientists who came immediately and were united in ONE MISSION: to help these magnificent mammals survive and find their way back into freedom… in this case the rough and ice-cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

A difficult Mission under the circumstances.
We know too little about these giant mammals – why they put themselves into such a predicament, and how we should react to it. An example: to keep them simply alive, they need to be turned from one side to the other every 20 minutes to reduce pressure on their internal organs. And they need to be kept cool – which wasn’t a problem on that cold stormy day… And they need to be kept wet, i.e. hydrated – a task taken on by many dedicated helpers.

“Hundreds of people donned wetsuits and took to the water to encourage the whales back to sea. Some swam far out beyond the breakers with the whales only to watch the rescued creatures turning and riding the waves back to the shore or rocks, where they lay thrashing feebly.

A volunteer swam out with a little calf three times, but then it died. “I put my hand on its chest and could feel its heart beating so hard it felt like it wanted to jump out and then it stopped.”

No Time, Storms and a rough Sea

Lots of good ideas and plans – like taking the whales to a nearby naval base (Simonstown) and transporting them on boats to the deep sea or options including using a helicopter or navy landing craft or using tugs – had to be abandoned as Time and the extremely rough Sea were against them.

The condition of the whales deteriorated rapidly; they were suffocating fast and painfully under their own weight on the beach, their lungs collapsing… Humans kept them wet around the clock and earth-moving equipment was used to get these huge beings carefully back into their element, the sea. While these giant mammals are huge, they are also very delicate. If you get sand down their blowhole it’s like squirting water up your nose.

But that day the Sea was against them too. Despite the desperate and daring human efforts the giant mammals that could be returned back into the sea…  beached themselves  again, they just couldn’t – or wouldn’t – make it and over the day, their number grew to… 55.

And lastly: are we entitled to interfere and get them back into the sea – possibly against Nature?

Darlene Ketten, a neuroethologist and expert on hearing in marine mammals at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Mass. said in an interview on the matter:
“If you have an animal and it is stranded and you insist on returning it to the sea, are you harming the population? If they are sick or diseased, what are we doing to that population pool? I’m not advocating that we don’t rehabilitate animals, if we can. We should understand causes of stranding, but we also have to accept the fact that strandings may be in many cases natural phenomenon.” [...]

What a tragedy!

I could not be there in person then but meanwhile I have met and spoken to those who were… and it’s easy imagining the drama that took its course with the realization that there was no way out for those peaceful creatures of the seas than a final exit as the most humane option to release them from their extreme pain.

“If you do get the animal to water and try to get it to swim off, and if it returns two or three times, the decision will have to be made that it is not going to survive and a veterinarian must euthanize it. Depending on how big the animal is, you cannot always use drugs in which case shooting is the best option.” [Darlene Ketten on the Kommetjie Stranding]

This is what happened then…

IMAGINE… a dark and storm-swept beach and – around each whale – a human family with many children, talking to each other, touching, communicating and… yes, praying together.

IMAGINE… a dedicated vet who I know well trying to administer a final dosis and realizing that what would kill an elephant “…just doesn’t work”. What a labour of love to take on! And what a terrible realization that there was only one solution… And no silencers… And many people, parents and children, not ready to leave the whales.

It had to be done. There was not much time to manage or organize, the animals were suffering.

IMAGINE… the emotions at the first shot. The chaos, the protest, the pain.

It had to be done. 40+ times. Until there was Peace.

BUT ALSO IMAGINE… these killer whales have a mouth filled with huge sharp teeth… and never within this entire tragic operation was there a bite, a hurt, any form of aggression. Never!

They knew!

Man and Nature met within the “Space of Trust” I so often write about… Clearly, here it was, including everybody involved. It was an experience on a very deep emotional level where Man and Nature are ONE… and once the pain, the anger and the frustration are over, the memory will manifest itself as a gift of Love for all.

The Lesson is the Message

After some research on this phenomena I discovered that mass strandings of dolphins, whales and other marine mammals date back to the time of Aristotle. However, as the drastic pollution of our beautiful planet over the last 50 years has accelerated dramatically, not to speak of the water pollution, the noise of ships and submarines equipped with military sonar… and bearing in mind the extreme sensitivity of these extraordinary creatures that play such an important role within the ecology of our oceans, all this may have led to a rise of such terrible events.

These are assumptions though.

Nobody really knows why these strandings happen and whether it is a sign to worry about something specific besides the fact itself. Without being a specialist in the field, I believe it could have to do with their sophisticated sonar system that leads their path even if the path itself has changed – for instance, a coast line changes as a result of a tectonic shift.

A specialist from the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Unit explained that the stranding “…could have been a miscalculation of navigation or the dominant animal, usually a female, could have been sick”.

Communication HOME

The fact is that like us humans dolphins and whales are social creatures that have a sophisticated communication system. They travel together in groups. It appears that if one goes ashore, the rest follows – which can lead to mass strandings… as in Kommetjie.

Live together. Die together?

Let’s take the Lesson of this experience and … CHANGE!

Yes – we can… We are ONE world… and we want to leave it to our Children as a HOME to LIVE a Life in Joy!

In that sense, I am looking forward to the next movie of one of my favorite French directors, Luc Besson (Le grand Bleu) – called HOME – enjoy the trailer – take the Message, Live it:

If you don’t see the above video, click HERE.

Bianca Gubalke
TouchVisionTalk

Related posts:

1. Communication with Dolphins

Tags: Bianca Gubalke, Change, Communicating with Dolphins, communication, Communication HOME, false killer whales, HOME by Luc Besson, intuition, Kommetjie, News, Noordhoek, South Africa, whales

This entry was posted on June 2, 2009 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Adventure, Noordhoek, Online Communication, South Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.