IN this book I tell two very different stories about a remarkable

mammal, the spinner dolphin: one story about its life and soci-

eties at sea, and the other about its fate at the hands of man. I

have purposely set one story

the way it has been for me.

against the other, because that s

I ll assume that in picking up this book you share with me

at least some interest in the lives and fates of these engaging

animals. If so, you will find a good many insights into their

lives here, because we were the first scientists to study their

wild societies underwater where their lives are truly spent. Their

grace and beauty strike any new underwater observer at once.

It was only after much looking that we began to understand

another key feature of their lives: they are so thoroughly crea-

tures of their schools that they have surrendered some aspects

of normal mammalian individuality to the group. A spinner

dolphin alone is very much less than a whole animal.

In the first story I describe my original experiences with

spinner dolphins, and then how I assembled scientific teams

of colleagues and students to study what it means to be a spin-

ner dolphin. These efforts have been wonderful adventures in