Michael Butler's Blog

Recently Cheryl, a friend, told me she has just swum with the dolphins. It reminded me to write a story I had intended to do last week. Then there was all that press with dolphins being wiped out in Florida. The supposition was their deaths were caused by sonar from US Naval submarines.

This brought back some memories.
In the 60s I went with Hugh OBrian to Miami. We visited a Naval station where they were working with dolphins. The object was to learn the dolphin language.

It was fascinating. The dolphins were located in long shed right next to the ocean. Each dolphin was kept in a small tank for some time each day. These tanks were coffin-like and were linked to another dolphin tank by a water channel. The purpose was to record the sounds as one dolphin talked to another and attempt to decipher what the sounds meant. I never quite understand how this decoding was accomplished. We were told that many sounds, including simple commands, had been deciphered.

The man running this program was Dr. John Lilly, a young PhD. who was very excited about his work. He obviously loved his charges. They were well cared for. Hugh and I were very impressed that our Navy was working to advance animal/human communication. What a benefit for the world to be able to communicate with these delightful creatures! Or so we thought?

Later we heard Dr Lilly had resigned from this program.
He claimed the Naval objective was to train the dolphins to be living torpedoes. I spent time with John Lilly in Los Angeles, equally depressed.

Check out http://www.johnclilly.com