Other: Interspecies Communication
Response to Ch. 10. Nollman
By Tanasa Slovin (05/11/10 15:50:04)
Related animals: Dolphin, Tuna, Whale

Well first of all, I will not be eating tuna anymore. Second of all, I thought Chapter 10 of Nollman’s book was a brilliant conclusion that pronounced the break through of accomplishing Nollman & Katy’s goal of successfully interacting with human/dolphin music making. This break through that occurred in early February regarding the “percussive, and quite random—sounding like a room full of fast typists, if that can be imagined in two hundred feet of water” (p. 152). Then the unheard of happened, Nollman says, “Everybody—dolphins, humans, bottom fish, shamans, guitar players—everybody was playing music with everybody else” (p. 153). This is just really remarkable. I can’t imagine being there and witnessing all of these amazing sounds from wild animals. I thought it was really interesting that Nollman could even dignify that the particular note was the key of D-major. It was also amazing that Nollman would play a particular tune called “Misty” and that’s what the dolphins and the other underwater sea creatures responded to. Nollman also noticed the dolphins playing a game of swimming back and forth to the boat and back. Katy even interacted with the dolphins physically as she swam in the water, the dolphins would make passes at her, which was in fact another breakthrough. The outline of the chart of the story of the relationship of dolphins and humans is an interesting one to observe. Nollman created a chart showing how many days they spent out on the water, the amount of dolphin sightings, the amount of times the dolphins were heard and the rapport that was established. The rapport of the charts progress was dated from December, January and February. It shows that February was the most successful month in regards to the amount of response that was given by the dolphins.
Overall, the incident that happened with Fred Stern and his family was an unfortunate even to have occurred. It’s too bad that these events that had happened have made Nollman and Katy to suffer from too much negative public exposure. I enjoy that Nollman remains confident at the conclusion of the chapter by stating, “The gift given by animals is precious: a guide back to balance” (p. 159).


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