In the Mediterranean from the earliest days, as recorded by Aelian in his On the Characteristics of Animals, VI, 15, to the present day, torchlight fishing with the aid of dolphins has been a traditional way of fishing. This has been described by Nicholas Apostolides in his book La Pêche en Grèce, who tells how fishermen of the Sporades catch their garfish “in the darkest nights of the month of October” by methods very similar to those described by Aelian. Briefly, the fish attracted by the fishermen’s flares begin to collect, whereupon the dolphins appear and drive them into the fishermen’s nets.
Similar methods of fishing were practiced in the Antipodes, off the New Zealand and Queensland coasts. The aborigines of Moreton Bay, Queensland, used to catch mullet with the aid of dolphins, at a place appropriately enough called Amity Point. The aborigines recognized individual dolphins and called them by name. With their nets ready on the beach the aborigines waited for a shoal of fish to appear, whereupon they would run down and make a peculiar splashing in the water with their spears, and the dolphins on the outside of the shoal would drive the fish towards the nets for the aborigines to catch. Fairholme, who described these events in 1856, writes, “For my part I cannot doubt that the understanding is real, and that the natives know these porpoises [actually the dolphin Tursiops catalania], and that strange porpoises would not show so little fear of the natives. The oldest men of the tribe say that the same kind of fishing has always been carried on as long as they can remember. Porpoises abound in the bay, but in no other part do the natives fish with their assistance.”
The Irrawaddy River dolphin is also an assistant-fisherman. John Anderson reports that “The fishermen believe that the dolphin purposely draws fish to their nets, and each fishing village has its particular guardian dolphin which receives a name common to all the fellows of his school; and it is this superstition which makes it so difficult to obtain specimens of this Cetacean. Colonel Sladen has told me that suits are not infrequently brought into the native courts to recover a share in the capture of fish, in which a plaintiff’s dolphin has been held to fill the nets of rival fishermen.” (John Anderson, Account of the Zoological Results of Two Expeditions to Western Yunnan.)
The Pink-Bellied river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis) of the Trapajós, a tributary of the Amazon, also helps its human friends with fishing. Dr. F. Bruce Lamb[6] says that this dolphin, locally known as the boto, “is reported to have saved the lives of helpless persons whose boats have capsized, by pushing them ashore. None of the dreaded flesh-eating piranhas appear when a porpoise is present, for they themselves would be eaten.” And he goes on to give an eye-witness account of fishing with the aid of a trained dolphin. “My curiosity was aroused,” he writes, “by the paddler, who began tapping on the side of the canoe with his paddle between strokes and whistling a peculiar call. Asking Rymundo about this, he startled me by casually remarking that they were calling their boto, their porpoise.... As we approached the fishing grounds near the riverbank, Rymundo lit his carbide miner’s lamp, adjusted the reflector, chose his first harpoon, and stood up in the bow ready for action. Almost immediately on the offshore side of the canoe about 50 feet from us we heard a porpoise come up to blow and take in fresh air.” The porpoise then chased the fish toward the canoe and Rymundo harpooned them with ease.
Many ancient writers have referred to the brilliancy of the changeful colors when the dolphin is dying. Byron makes reference to this in “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,”
“Parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour as it gasps away;
The last still loveliest, till ’tis gone, and
all is gray.”