Denise Herzing, the director of the Wild Dolphin Project and creator of the Cetacean Hearing Telemetry device (CHAT), had a very appropriate reaction to hearing a successful dolphin translation: “I was like whoa! We have a match. While dolphins can be trained to understand and respond to human commands, that communication has so far only been one way. Rather than try to translate all their sounds, Dr. Herzing taught the dolphins eight words that relate to their environment, like seaweed and bow wave ride (the wave created by a boat, which dolphins can ride). This translation system was designed to work as so: “Divers will play back one of eight words coined by the team to mean seaweed or bow wave ride.
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