Ada's Thoughts

Ada Forney

Where do you get the ideas for your stories about dolphins? Most of my dolphin stories are original stories. My husband, who is very creative and I sit down and brainstorm. We are inspired by other storytelling and we start coming up with lyrics for songs. My husband came up with the names of the three dolphin characters: Spinner, Riptide and Leap. He also did the artwork for the poster and CD. I craft the story part around a factual piece of information. The first program I did was on manatees. I used the idea of the stellar seacow, which was extinct in less than 30 years because of man. It was over 30 feet long, the largest ever lived. With dolphins, I focus on the main predator of dolphins, which is mankind and the tuna fishing industry. I came across some absolutely horrifying facts and people come up to me and say, "Do they really do that?" If you've never seen tuna fishing, they put the nets out and they track the tuna by tracking dolphins, who swim across the surface. They tuna stay in the bottom of the net. All the fishermen have to do is back the boat up, the net falls and the dolphin will leave. It's not far enough down that they would lose maybe more than one or two tuna. Instead what they do is put these nets out, close the bottom and they send small boats out and they actually throw explosives into the middle of the dolphin pods. They kill as many as 100,000 dolphins in a single tuna fishing. So that factual information lives at the heart of the story. Then I build a story around with these three dolphins who are friends: one who leaps higher than the others, one who spins like a corkscrew and one who races through the waves faster than the others. Their interaction and the heart of the story (the crisis and resolution) is this idea of the tuna fishing industry. So it's a brainstorming process and polishing the stories by not only bouncing them off my husband, but also going into a school and telling the story making sure the kids understand them. 

Does the Canaveral National Seashore have dolphins? Yes. There is actually a population of dolphin that live only in the Indian River Lagoon. Every single dolphin that lives in the Indian River Lagoon has a different shape of fin. It's like a fingerprint. We have very sophisticated devices which allow us to take computerized images of the fins and we assign a number to it immediately. There is a continual population of dolphins in the lagoon. You will also sometimes see them in the ocean out here. 

Are there any particular kinds of dolphins here? Yes. Most of what you will see are Bottlenose Dolphins or Common Dolphins because there are more of them than any of the others. They are the ones you most often see. The type of dolphin you see, depends on your location in the world. 

How does telling stories about dolphins help to protect them? It raises peoples' consciousness. Like I said before, when I began talking to people about how they fished for tuna, people were absolutely amazed and almost refused to believe that people would actually throw explosives in the center of the pods. What they are trying to do is to knock out the tuna in the bottom of the net, but of course, what happens with all the explosives going off all around them, the dolphins are either killed or they are deafened. Even if they survive, they are not going to be able to fish because they can no longer hear because of the damage to their hearing from the bombs. So, it's letting people know. And yes, we've made progress. There are openings in the net from which dolphins can go, but it's still not enough. To me, it's really important that people understand how priceless and precious dolphins are and what we're doing to make the world poorer by removing them. I call it a delicate spiral of the dance of life. Each chain in that spiral, each piece, as its removed makes us a little poorer. And how many of those links can we remove before the whole thing comes crashing down. So, this is one more piece in that chain, that I'm doing what I can to help protect. I also have a story about a little girl who was saved from a shark by dolphins. That's another thing people don't realize, is that dolphin's are very, very protective. They will adopt a person or an entire community. They will go to that person and they will swim with them-by their own choice not because they are in an enclosed place-and they will actually protect that person. There have been reported cases from all over the world of people rescued from shark attacks by dolphins. There is even one I heard about a ship that was being bashed up against the rocks and the four dolphins actually lifted the ship up to prevent it from crashing on the rocks. They kept the ship afloat so the men on it could get off and get to safety. People need to understand that this is not a one-way thing. Dolphins actually come to us and do things that are very unexpected sometimes. So why should we be predators to them? 

What can kids do to help protect dolphins? First of all, be aware. By being aware, start working actively with your parents. You can actually get involved with groups like the World Wildlife Fund. You can go out on their site and look up the Personal Action Center. Encourage your parents to get involved. They will send you email alerts when there are dangers to the environment and endangered species. Your parents can send faxes or emails to their legislators, whether it's local, state, national or international to tell them they don't want them to do things because they will affect the environment or the animals within that environment. By getting involved in dolphin protection groups, like Earth Watch. You can adopt a dolphin. The money goes to help protect the dolphins. You can get involved with places like the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, which provides a very extensive dolphin education program. There are lots of things you can do. Spread the word. Tell other people about what's going on out there in the world in terms of dolphins and other animals.

How long have you been telling stories? Officially, for the last ten years. I started by getting into an organization called Toastmasters International. I did a management presentation at Harris Corporation down in Palm Bay, Florida. The vice president came up to me and said, "You're pretty good at this presentation thing, you ought to get into Toastmasters, which is a group that does professional public speaking." It all started from there.

What was it like the first time you told your stories in public? I teach storytelling. Most people rate their fear of death lower than their fear of speaking in public. Most people would rather DIE than be up here. I already had a background from toastmaster's in giving presentations so by the time I was a storyteller I had a lot of preparation. The very time I got up in front of a group, and for about a year, everything I did was scripted. Everything was written down. Everything was important. It just seemed natural. It just seemed right, so I didn't experience a lot of that nervousness that a lot of people experience. For me, it was I was meant to do.

Why did you become a storyteller? There is something about words and the power of words. I had a college professor one time tell me I had a "flow" when it came to words. I wasn't sure what he meant at the time. It's a kind of inspiration that reaches in and flows through me. The words flow through me in like a stream or river of words. And that flow of words flows out, and if I do my job correctly you don't see me you see the images painted by the words. That flow of words is what drives me as a storyteller. It's almost like a living movie inside of me. People ask me how I remember all my stories, because I do thousands and thousands of them. I can't tell you exactly, because it's, like I told you, it's this inspiration that takes over. And the power of words. I have told a family story from four generations in my family from Florida and Georgia and I have had someone in an assisted living community who hasn't spoken a word since they came there, come up to me and start telling me their stories. I have seen tears come to the eyes of someone who hears a story that they haven't heard since they were a child. There is a real commonality of story and that is another thing that drives me as a storyteller. If you can reach inside someone and change them a little bit just by the power of words.

How do dolphins relate to Greek Mythology? Well, the dolphins were sacred to the Greek people. The center of the world at that time was the city of Delphi. That's part of the Greek name for the dolphin. The story of Poseidon and Amphetrite and the dolphin constellation being placed in the sky….they felt that dolphins had a very unique and special place in society. They recognized the intelligence and the, almost, superiority over all the other creatures the dolphins had, so they gave them a unique place in mythology and their history. If you look at your Greek sculpture, you will see a lot of sculpture of dolphin's and also porpoise.

How do you adapt some of the stories to your storytelling style? Lots of research. We have an enormous library. I do lots of research to find that particular variant. What I look for is uniqueness about a story. I look for versions that no one has ever heard before. To me, that's the most important thing.