Chapter-5

New Evidence for Understanding Sound of Nature 

Following is news report in TNN 22 Jan 2005 

Can animals sense natural calamities before

they actually happen?

22 Jan 2005, 2348 hrs IST, TNN Reports of several natural disasters include anecdotes of strange behavior exhibited by animals and birds a few hours before they occur. It has been shown scientifically that several animals are far superior to humans in their sensory abilities to sound, temperature, touch, vibration, and to electrostatic, chemical and magnetic changes in their environment. It is quite possible that occurrence of some calamities is preceded by minute disturbances in the environment, including occurrence of low-intensity ground vibrations, low-frequency sounds and changes in magnetism. It is possible animals detect these and respond to them before humans can.  Sunrise, December 26, 2004. Wit Aniwat, whose family runs an elephant camp for tourists in Thailand, was awakened by an unusual alarm clock: the trumpeting and wailing of elephants. It was a bit out of the ordinary, but Wit thought nothing of it as the sun rose. There was work to do. Five minutes later, another oddity. “The elephants became very agitated,” Wit recalls in NATURE’s CAN ANIMALS PREDICT DISASTER? Astonished, he watched as the huge animals broke their chains and stampeded up a nearby hill. He and another trainer gave chase. But they hadn’t gotten very far when a terrifying sound overtook them: the sound of a towering wave of water crashing ashore and overwhelming everything in its path.    Wit Aniwat’s elephants broke their
chains and stampeded up a nearby
hill before the tsunami hit.      Luckily, Wit survived the tsunami. More than 200,000 other people around the Indian Ocean weren’t so lucky.  The elephants? They were fine too. Wit and many others believe it’s because they knew the wave was coming. And scientists say there’s a possibility that Wit is right. That’s because elephants are among a handful of animals known to be able to hear “infrasound,” the extremely low-frequency rumbles that are produced by natural phenomena from earthquakes and volcanoes to heavy winds and avalanches. Humans can’t hear infrasound, which scientists define as any sound pitched below 20 hertz to as low as 2 hertz. But it turns out that some animals, including elephants, hippos, giraffes, whales, and alligators, have acute infrasound hearing. In fact, studies have shown that they use infrasound — which can travel vast distances through the ground, air, and water — to carry on long-distance conversations. Researchers have homed in on these “invisible” communications in just the last few decades, as sophisticated microphones and recording equipment allowed them to listen in. Now, infrasound researchers wonder whether some animals can hear danger approaching. For instance, big storms such as hurricanes produce their own distinctive infrasonic signature. Similarly, earthquakes can produce several distinct infrasound pulses that can travel thousands of miles and much faster than water. Thus, tsunamis, also triggered by earthquakes, hit the shores only after infrasound. In Thailand, it’s possible that Wit’s elephants picked up these signals before the wave hit, prompting them to trumpet their fear and then flee. But we may never know for sure. Elephants carrying radio tags in the region may have offered important insight. Unfortunately, researchers lost contact with the tagged elephants eight hours prior to the tsunami. When they regained transmission an hour after the tsunami hit, they found the elephants in the same vicinity as they were prior to the tsunami — just a few hundred feet from the shore. It is impossible to know exactly what happened while the transmitters were down. Studies in zoos show that even animals known to hear infrasound don’t necessarily become agitated when they hear the signals. But researchers also note that the animals in zoos are so frequently subjected to infrasound, from their urban setting, that they may be desensitized. Scientists say carrying out experiments in the wild that might settle the matter once and for all would be very difficult and expensive.  But researchers are learning more about infrasound through other kinds of studies. Alligator researchers, for instance, are cracking the code that these huge reptiles use to signal their mates. Among other things, they’ve learned that alligators can produce an array of infrasonic signals by vibrating air inside special sound-producing sacs in their chins.  Other researchers are studying the idea that infrasonic sound can produce emotions in people. To test this, they asked people at a concert to rate their emotional responses to several pieces of music, some of which had been secretly “spiced” with infrasonic noises. More than a quarter of the listeners reported that the infrasonic melodies produced “ghostly” feelings of anxiety, uneasiness, sorrow, fear, and chills down the spine. Infrasonic sound can also make people nauseous and sick. Those physical and emotional reactions may explain why horror movies used to feature scary, low-pitched organ music, the researchers say. And perhaps why animals too get scared when they hear a mysterious, infrasonic pulse.  CAN ANIMALS PREDICT DISASTER?Gehan De Silva Wijeyeratne is the CEO of an adventure and ecotravel company. He is also a self-professed naturalist, geographer, writer, and tourism personality for Sri Lanka. After the tsunami, he spent four days working with search teams looking for survivors and bodies.Gehan De Silva WijeyeratneDid you find any dead animals during your search?What was astonishing was that we didn’t come across any dead bodies of animals, except one fish. It’s remarkable that with so many human casualties, the wildlife could have escaped unscathed.Why do you think there were no dead animals? How do you think they escaped?
It was very clear that there were no dead animals because some of the bigger mammals that go there, the wild pig, the water buffalo … [their] corpses would have been very evident visually. Also, as you progress to the fourth day, if there were dead animals, the bad smell from the carcasses would have wafted into the breeze and would have been picked up. So it is very much a confirmed fact that the animals escaped the tsunami.To move to your next question, how did they escape? There were a number of reasons. First, of course, the density of animals on the coastline was low. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any when the tsunami struck, because we know when one of the naturalists of the game lodge was fleeing, intuitively followed a group of a kind of leaf monkeys. He knew that if he ran behind the monkeys, they would lead him to safety. It seemed like they had an extra warning period of anything from a few seconds to a few minutes or more. And this could be underlain by scientific bases; one could simply be that animals’ hearing is so much more sensitive [than humans']. An animal can hear a dry leaf rustle at 100 meters (328 feet). … As the wave rode into the shore, it is possible that they had just a few seconds of extra warning. The leaf monkeys, the giant squirrels, the lizards, and snakes just had that extra few seconds to run away to safety.For the other mammals, like elephants, it becomes more interesting. Did they perhaps have several hours of prior notice? We know that elephants communicate using infrasound. They can communicate by using special nerve centers. … They will stamp on the ground and send seismic waves, and other elephants can pick this up because the soles of their feet have passing corpuscles that are arranged like layers of an onion. These then act like ground listening antennae or receptors. So they take these signals in, and they have a sophisticated neural apparatus for filtering out background noise and filtering what they need to hear, and they amplify that.One possibility is when the earthquake happened off Sumatra, some of those ground waves were detected by them, giving them a forewarning. Another possibility is as a tsunami wave came in, there would have been some wave energy carried as seismic waves, some as infrasound, either ground borne or airborne. Animals like elephants could have picked it up. And it’s possible that they gradually moved away. This could be why there weren’t many reports of animals fleeing in a hurry. Other animals like the water monitor — a kind of reptile — and the giant squirrels, who don’t have this sophisticated communication apparatus, would have listened to wavelengths that we hear. But [their hearing] intensity is so accurate that it could have given them that extra five seconds to race up a tree or flee an extra 50 meters (164 feet) inland. At the time [of] the tsunami, that was the difference between life and death. Do you think animals have a “sixth sense”?Well, I think unfortunately this sixth sense has been portrayed as some kind of psychic sense or extrasensory perception. I’ve watched elephants using infrasound. I’ve seen elephants in Yala standing motionless with their trunks on the ground. I’ve seen people coming up to the water hole saying, “It’s just an elephant standing still and motionless,” and they will pass. I’ve realized what the elephant is doing is actually communicating, and I’ve stayed to see what that elephant is communicating with. Five minutes later, I’ve sometimes seen a family herd arriving, and in one case I saw one bull elephant and the two were clearly communicating with each other, because as soon as the other bull emerged out of the forest, there was violent confrontation.So there’s a lot of field evidence, scientifically proven, that elephants communicate using infrasound over distances over 40 kilometers (25 miles). It doesn’t mean that [the animal is] psychic, and it could be this kind of thing outside our perception that allows animals to detect danger before we do. There’s a lot of evidence documented that when an elephant is shot in one area, especially in South Africa, elephant herds 30 to 40 kilometers (18 to 25 miles) away have responded with a lot of distress. Just as we will communicate orally in some wavelengths, which you and I can hear, the elephants are communicating in a normal way, but using infrasound that we can’t hear. Mammals such as lions are also known to have very sensitive nerve receptors on their feet. So clearly mammals have adaptations for detecting ground borne vibrations. It could be to help them detect prey, or it could be that when one mammal groans and claims its territory, some of the ground borne vibrations travel long distances. Infrasound do travel long distances and curve around the earth. So we may think its psychic and something to be scoffed [at]. But there probably are very practical, scientific reasons to explain why animals survived the tsunami and humans didn’t.Why do you think humans don’t have the ability to hear infrasounds?The evolutionary process worked in such a way that the primates who had binocular vision, who had a greater area of cerebral cortex unit, who had high brain power to use tools and learn agriculture, and who could reproduce very well were able to colonize new habitats and face danger using intelligence as the key tool for survival and as a colonizing tool. The intelligence was so powerful that it meant any losses you made in terms of not having the same auditory range … also not hearing the ultrasound wavelengths, not hearing the infrasound wavelengths … and in terms of our optical apparatus, not seeing in ultraviolet and not seeing in infrared … the advantage of using the brain for three-dimensional thinking, for lateral thinking, for being able to store memories, for being able to anticipate, to be able to premeditate actions — the advantages far offset the disadvantages of using brain power for other resources, and I think this is why the human mammal has evolved as it is. …. As for other mammals, due to various environmental pressures, [they] based their bets on other sensors, perhaps seeing ultraviolet, hearing infrasound, and then they went on a particular evolutionary pathway.How do you explain the fact that some elephants that were carrying tracking devices did not move great distances prior to the tsunami?So how do elephants figure out that a tsunami or some seismic event is creating a burst of infrasound energy? How do they realize something out of the ordinary is happening?
Well, in terms of the filtering mechanism, it has to do with the brain being highly evolved for listening and sound. … Imagine you and I are in a very crowded park. Music is blaring, there are 100 conversations going on. Not only can I keep a conversation between us going, I can suddenly tune into a conversation at that table or at that table. … If you’re driving through traffic or walking through traffic, if an unfamiliar vehicle toots its horn, you know it’s danger. So it’s much the same thing; we don’t realize we are good at filtering out the noise we don’t want to hear, but still keeping the channel open for something unusual that spikes up, something that potentially warns us of danger. I think for elephants it’s the same way. They can cut out the mundane noise, but listen to something unusual and say, “Hey, what’s that?”Ravi Corea is the founder and president of the Sri Lanka Preservation Society. On the evening following the tsunami, he surveyed Sri Lanka’s southern coast to assess the damage to the vegetation and animals.
Ravi CoreaOnce I got the to the national park, it was the same thing. I didn’t see any casualties, which was also verified by park personnel. About 50 visitors died there, but those were the only incidents. And when I went, animals were already moving back. The damage seemed to be mostly to the vegetation, and probably to some of the beachhead. And of course, any kind of human structures that were there, like the park lodge and the cafeteria, that all got destroyed. What we saw when we were going through ecological assessment, for the most part, was that wherever that were natural barriers, for example, sand dunes, the impacts were minimal.In a sense, the tsunami was entirely a human disaster; it was not too much of an ecological disaster. Of course it washed away some beaches, and in fact some turtles, sea turtles, were carried far inland, you know, like 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in, and these turtles are trying to make [it] back into the sea, so in some cases they had to be carried back and put into the sea.Where you surprised that you did not find any dead animals?I was expecting at least SOME casualties. You saw incredible damage, and sometimes you wonder, who could have survived? In hindsight, you shouldn’t be surprised too, because most animals are in tune to their environment. They are always paying attention to what’s going around them, unlike humans — we tend to forget our environment, we get so [pre] occupied and so focused on what we are doing. But for animals, it’s exactly the opposite. That’s how they survive, always paying attention to what is going on. Also, if anything happens that they cannot understand, they take flight. They don’t stop to go close to it, to find out what the hell is going on. Also, their senses are much more highly evolved … their [sense of] smell, their hearing especially, and their eyesight too, in most cases. For instance, when the first wave came and it receded back, opening a kilometer of the coast up to the reef, people went into the sea. No animal would do that, you know? When the second wave came, there were all the people in the sea.Did you see unusual animal behavior prior to the tsunami?Half an hour before the tsunami happened, there was an elephant right in front of the hotel, and that is exactly where the waters came. So by the time the waters came, the elephant had moved away — he was way up on the sand dunes, opposite the hotel. Then, another good friend of mine saw [nocturnal] bats flying away, half an hour before the tsunami. And there is another friend of mine who has a house right by the beach, and he has two dogs that go for a run every day. But on that particular day the dogs were not excited at all to go with him. They were very reluctant, and that probably saved his life. So they had the idea that something was not quite right with the sea that day. So … it seems that animals have had better awareness of something not really right. Now, to an extent as if it is a sixth sense is a different story … it is just their sensory perception is so acute.What kind of heightened senses do you think animals have that allowed them to get an early warning?I would say it was auditory, because listen to the ocean now: there is a certain sound to it. And when a tsunami happens, I am sure it changes, obviously it has to change, you know, because physical changes happen. But if you don’t have the proper apparatus to notice that change, you’re not going to feel the change. But if you do, you know something’s wrong. When a huge vertical displacement of land mass has happened, which causes a displacement of a huge mass of water, it is making a lot of noise somewhere. So I think most of the animals were responding to sound waves at different registers. As humans our hearing is a narrow band compared to the spectrum of auditory waves — from infrasonic to high frequencies – which, we don’t have [the ability to hear].There are a lot of stories with elephants and dogs. Elephants have incredible hearing at lower registers. Dogs have very keen smell and very good hearing, especially at the higher frequencies. So obviously they had the necessary senses to listen to something and know that there was something not right.Bats have incredible sensory perception. They communicate by using sonar; they have very good sonar receptions. So obviously they hear intensely. During the tsunami, for instance, they were hearing stuff that we have no clue about.Do you think animals sent out warnings to other animals or even to humans?Animals have a very good communication network. In some cases, it is just a few animals that are giving the warning, and I think it is a good enough warning that it goes down the network. And then everyone starts running. Now for instance, there was a nature guide … he knew the best thing to do was to follow the monkeys because they would know the shortest, safest route out of this mess. So that’s what he did, he followed the monkeys, and he saved himself. It would be nice to see how far down the animal kingdom [the line of communication goes] and [at] what point the warning stops. But I know that mammals and birds take a cue from one another.Why do you think the animals survived?The simplest explanation is that these animals have a very good, well-developed sense, coupled with an immediate flight response. And that’s a very good combination. The way they respond to information that they get makes them outstanding.The part of this that makes it such a good story is that we are genetically programmed to believe in supernatural things. In any population no two animals are the same, so [some] elephants had no idea what was going on and they stayed put, but in some areas there are elephants that responded. But the point is, we don’t know this. We don’t have a large enough sample to make a definite conclusion about any of this stuff. Some animals have better developed senses than others. We know there is an information network, but we don’t know if all the animals are responding to the same information, and how they respond. … The day we can really communicate with animals to the extent of language, maybe we will find out. But until then, all of this is going to be at most a best guess. Do you think we will be able to find out and use animals’ “sixth sense”?It’s not like tsunamis are happening all over the world, that you can take a bunch of animals and go send them off and then look at them, and, you know, do your observation work, [collect] data, and see how they are responding. I think … people have totally misunderstood the meaning of “sixth sense.”We always use our senses. I mean, we use dogs for drug sniffing, to find people buried under snow in avalanches; we use pigs to look for truffles; we use elephants for various things. People are not even looking at the senses of animals. Now we want to know: if animals have an additional sense, above and beyond these five senses, [if] they can warn us of events that have not even happened. From what I know, I don’t think they can.And the thing for me is … that if this idea really catches on, a lot of animals are going to be susceptible to unnecessary research. … The better approach is to pay attention to nature. Tsunamis are a part of this earth’s history. It’s part of this earth’s image and legacy. It’s the same thing with hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes, and volcanoes, you know? They are bad for us, but they are good for the earth. They are always going to be a part of this earth. Otherwise, if they all of a sudden stop, that is the end of us too.What we should really pay attention to be what we have learned from this tsunami. And we did learn some very good things. We know natural barriers, they are cost effective, you don’t need to invest a lot money on heavy-duty high-technology equipment that most countries can’t even afford. Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia can’t afford high-tech hearing and listening and satellite, and all this stuff. But natural barriers are there, there is no maintenance, no repairing. And then from this tsunami we know exactly what kind of areas water came through, so don’t have any development happen there … move people away from there. We are supposed to be the more intelligent animals here, right? The more intelligent, the more resilient, the more adaptive. Use these positive abilities to make life safer for humans.
Wit Aniwat is a mahout at his family’s elephant-riding center near Phuket, Thailand. He describes the elephants’ behavior prior to the tsunami:
Wit AniwatOn December 26th, at about 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning, the elephant trainer brought two elephants back from the forest to the camp. Those two elephants cried, felt uneasy … something was unusual. I was sleeping in the house and I heard the elephants cry. I thought, “Why would the trainer hit the elephants so early in the morning?” I wasn’t able to sleep at all, and they cried for a long time.At 8 a.m., I came to work at the camp and I asked the trainer, “Why did you hit the elephants?” The trainer said that he did not hit the elephants; they cried on their own. Why the elephants cried for a long time, he didn’t know. Then from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., we opened for business as usual.From 10 a.m. to 10:05 a.m., those two elephants that had cried at dawn showed some unusual behavior, were irritated and anxious to run away. At the beginning, I didn’t pay any attention. Later on, they pulled and broke the chains and ran to the mountaintop. The trainer and I ran after the elephants and called them to come back.On December 26th, at about 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning, the elephant trainer brought two elephants back from the forest to the camp. Those two elephants cried, felt uneasy … something was unusual. I was sleeping in the house and I heard the elephants cry. I thought, “Why would the trainer hit the elephants so early in the morning?” I wasn’t able to sleep at all, and they cried for a long time.At 8 a.m., I came to work at the camp and I asked the trainer, “Why did you hit the elephants?” The trainer said that he did not hit the elephants; they cried on their own. Why the elephants cried for a long time, he didn’t know. Then from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., we opened for business as usual.From 10 a.m. to 10:05 a.m., those two elephants that had cried at dawn showed some unusual behavior, were irritated and anxious to run away. At the beginning, I didn’t pay any attention. Later on, they pulled and broke the chains and ran to the mountaintop. The trainer and I ran after the elephants and called them to come back.What happened just five minutes before the tsunami?The two-chained elephants at the back here started to get irritated and felt uneasy; they wanted to run away, they tried to pull the chain. They pulled and broke the chains and ran away. These two [ran] away first, and there was one more here who followed those two to the mountaintop. But there was another one chained over here and it tried to run away also, but it could not. And those two elephants that broke the chain went up to the hill and the trainer and I ran after those two elephants and tried to call them to come back. The trainer didn’t know that the wave was coming. No matter what we did, the elephants would not return. … After a while there was a strong wind and sound from water, broken trees. I turned around and saw that water was coming, so I went back to the camp. I wanted to observe and see what was going on and why the elephants ran away, until the water was about to reach me. … I ran and followed the trainer to the mountain. But at about 10 o’clock I had a group of five Japanese tourists arrive to go on an elephant ride. The elephants started walking from this point along the road and then up along the mountainside. The two elephants that carried the tourists heard the noise just like the other two at the campsite. The two elephants that brought the tourists up to the mountain seemed like they were in a hurry to bring the tourists to the mountaintop, to a higher place. At that moment it was hard for the trainer to control the elephants.The tsunami came about 10 minutes after 10 o’clock. In 10 minutes, they could not walk far. It was a short distance. When the wave came, the elephants that carried Japanese tourists heard the noise and the trainer looked back to find out what was really happening. After seeing the water, the elephants just brought the tourists up to the mountaintop.Do you think if humans had known that the elephants breaking the chains and running up the hill was a sign of coming danger, was a warning sign, this could have saved human lives?I think so. You first simply observe ants: when they move their living quarters, it means that is going to rain heavily in the near future. On that day, we did not observe what it really was, what the elephants tried to run away from. If we would have known that when they cried and cried for a long time, it meant that disaster was near, of course we would not remain here, we would had gone also.What was it about the tsunami do you think they were specifically detecting: was it sound, pressure? I think the elephants have their own sense more than anything else. Because before dawn they cried for so long, and the way they cried was different. They cried differently from when they play in the rain. But there is no rain in the summertime. They just cried.For me, I believe that every animal has his own senses, feelings. They have more sense than humans. From what I [have] seen, I raised a lot of chickens here, but none of my chickens died. I think animals have an extraordinary sense that humans do not have.  Chris Cruz, a scuba diving instructor and trip leader was out at sea, just off of Khao Lak, north of Phuket in Thailand, with diving crews when the tsunami hit. He says he was saved because he followed dolphins to safety.Chris CruzWhat happened the day of the tsunami?The earthquake [occurred] around 8:30 a.m., and around 10:30 most of the boats on the west side of one of the main islands, the waters were still acting the same, like whirlpools whirling, whirlpools all over the place. And some boats were going around the ropes. We were wrangling each other. We told each other, “Let’s cut the ropes. We have to let go of some over the anchor and we have to move.” Around that time, a number of boats got close together and all of a sudden there were dolphins jumping right in front of our boats. They were just jumping, playing, jumping, jumping. And I’d been there for two years in the Similan islands and I’ve never seen dolphins that close to the boat. Yes, you can spot them from a distance; sometimes they come in; but they’ve never exhibited that behavior.So what came to play in my mind were folk stories in the Philippines. Like pregnant women being helped by dolphins when there’s a shark attacking. So I told one of the dive masters, “We probably have to radio some of the diving instructors, some of the captains. … Let’s order the captain to follow the dolphins.” The [captains] agreed, so we all followed the dolphins. They kept jumping and jumping and jumping and jumping. Once more we followed them. Maybe we were five, seven, 10 boats all-together. … Then we realized the dolphins at that point were trying to lead us westward, farther away from the island — not the mainland, but the islands. … This is what was playing in my mind: they’re talking to us, “Why are you here? Follow us.” So we did follow them and then eventually around 10:30 we felt just a little wave; you would not feel it if you’re not close to the line, to the island, because the wave is not yet breaking. Basically it will be breaking 50 kilometers (31 miles) away, but there are the small islands that experienced some waves, around 5 meters (16 feet) high.When we came back we realized some of the tents, some of the kitchen utensils, the restaurant tables and chairs, sleeping facilities, they were all destroyed and taken out in the water. Which meant that if we [hadn't] followed the dolphins we would have smashed into the island. It was actually as simple as that … if we insisted on staying there, there was a real, real big chance we would have been swept by the water and smashed into the rocks and into the islands. But what’s amazing, because we were far away, 50 kilometers away from the mainland where the tsunami really struck; the water came up, but you wouldn’t even have noticed it. It was amazing the dolphins followed that sign, and for me, like, I maintain the idea — I’m not a scientist, I don’t know what really happened, but for me what really came into essence in my mind and in my heart was folk stories from my own native country. When there are disasters, animals like this, they come and they help, and for me it’s like a rapport and symbiotic relationship between animals and human beings. So when I asked the captain to follow the dolphins, he immediately followed, he realized that the dolphins were probably communicating with us. Most of the diving professionals and even the divers were just looking and they were very happy with the interaction. There’s a certain kind of joy you feel every time there’s animals like this. It’s as simple as that.Do you think the dolphins saved your lives?This is what I believe. But once more, I’m not really in the position to qualify the case. … I really believe if we did not follow them, we would have been in a real, real bad predicament. Because when we went inside and we checked the island, we saw a mound of destruction that happened. Which incidentally, we did clean up after a few weeks. We were able to see everything; tables, chairs, kitchen utensils, bedding, tents, everything, you know, and of course a number of dead people. Jewelry, money, everything, anything you can say is connected to living. I believe the moment the dolphins popped up, they were already giving us signals for interaction. A number of people who have been on the boats … people who have been in the diving industry for years … these are moments that they’ve always been waiting for, a chance to interact with animals like this. And around that time on the 26th of December, just before the waves came, around 10 o’clock, 10:30, when the dolphins appeared it was the perfect moment for us to interact with them, because we didn’t really know what was happening. In the history of Thailand they have not, at least in present history, they have not ever experienced a tsunami before. It was for them a very important lesson also. So I believe when we followed the dolphins, … they really on their part were telling us something. So for us, I sincerely believe this is a lesson we should all take, so once more when there will be disasters like this, these things can be documented, and we at least have … in effect, like some guidelines or signals to follow when dolphins appear like this, in terms of maybe typhoon or maybe again after another earthquake. At least we already realize they are communicating with us, something important, something, which means our very own life and death.After this happened, diving instructors and divers both were communicating a lot, some people were in tears, and a number of people, like me, believed the dolphins saved us and communicated with us. It was very emotional for us, especially when we came back to the mainland. We realized the monstrosity of the disaster that occurred. The number of people littered in the streets, all dead. We realized there was something special that really happened. It was almost a miracle we survived. … The miracle was just mere timing, being in the right place at the right time, following your instincts, understanding your surroundings, being in tune with nature, also cooperating and having a symbiotic relationship with other creatures of the sea.