The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (TV Series) A Sound of Dolphins (1972) User Reviews

See Cousteau and his crew scare a dolphin half to death!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 10 December 2015]

In many of the episodes of "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau", the Calypso crew perform experiments on creatures that they capture...and then they release them later with little harm incurred. However, in this show about dolphins, viewers might find these experiments a bit disturbing. It isn't like they torture the animal they catch, but because dolphins are so intelligent, it's keenly aware it's been imprisoned and the creature begins to flounder--and eventually almost dies from shock. When they capture another and give it a playmate, the first dolphin rebounds quickly and they're able to then perform a variety of other experiments to learn about the animal's echolocation and intelligence. It's all very interesting once you get over the rather traumatic portion! Additionally, the crew visits shore (Mauritania) and interact with locals who have never seen blond-haired white folks. Overall, an interesting show that illustrates just how intelligent these whales are.

Don't mess with Mother Nature

[lesf86 · 3/10 · 1 July 2010]

I suppose there's the excuse "they did not know better" in the Old Days,but they almost killed the female dolphin for "no good reason". Then they tortured the male for their silly experiments. Love Jacques and most of his shows-I learned to SCUBA dive in the 1950's BECAUSE of his inspiration and invention-the Aqua Lung,but this show was a downer. I realize these kinds of things are necessary for research but capturing a WILD dolphin instead of using one already in captivity makes no sense and was cruel. Some marine institute surely would have co-operated if Cousteau had asked them. This entire series is dated but was great and very interesting in its day !