The cooperativeness of dolphins with fishermen in various 

 parts of the world has gone on for several thousand years with- 

 out its significance having registered much upon the conscious- 

 ness of the rest of the world — including the learned and the 

 scientific. 



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 Peche en Grece, who tells how fisher- 

 men of the Sporades catch their garfish "in the darkest nights of 

 the month of October" by methods very similar to those de- 

 scribed 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 can- 

 not 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. 



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