Alex takes samples of fish skin coming from the pens
er, Dr. John Lilly in Los Angeles. In two years Alex catalogued over 2,000 recordings of bottlenose dolphins and learned about working with marine mammals and audio equipment. “I would go into that room and fall into their world. I had found a treasure cave, the next door to my life. I kept slowing the recordings down, thinking these are signals from an intelligent mind.” Following her passion for animal communication, she secured permission from the local Oceanarium to listen to, record and swim with their captive dolphins. Anoth-
er door opened a few months later when their resident killer whale, Corky, gave birth to the first live calf in captivity. Alex stayed awake for days recording the event, then on a schedule of 12 hours a day or night, a month at a time. “The killer whale sounds really struck a chord in me. So different than the fasttalking hyper dolphins. They were slow, polite talkers, deliberate in their activities.
For two years she catalogued their sounds which she divided into 62 different categories. Her goal was to apply her findings in a study of wild whales and began her search for Corky’s family. She reached out to Dr. Michael Bigg, a marine biologist for Fisheries & Oceans Canada, who was studying killer whales of the British Columbia coast and had just devised an identification system based on distinctive markings and dorsal fins.
“I began to feel and understand the heart- wrenching experience of animals in captivity.”
“Dr. Biggs was a rare scientist that didn’t ignore me because of my youth and lack of advanced education. He sent me pictures of Corky’s mother and her A5 Pod and told
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