Hardy Jones

From the first moment I saw a dolphin I was enthralled. Unfortunately it was at the Miami SeaQuarium, a facility for captive dolphins. During the 1970s I spent time with Dr. John Lilly, a man who understood the potential for human-dolphin interaction. Being utterly naive, I set out to find free dolphins in the open sea and thanks to a tip from a treasure hunter, I found them in a remote area of the Bahamas. That started a more than 30-year relationship with the spotted dolphins of the western Bahamas. The story is chronicled in The Voice of the Dolphins, my new book.

But learning about the wonders of dolphins led me to understand the horrors they face at the hand of mankind. I have worked in Japan since 1979 to stop the slaughter of dolphins there. My films have appeared on National Geographic and PBS and we have had substantial success stopping these slaughters. But Taiji continues to kill dolphins and there is a huge kill of Dall's Porpoise in northern Japan.

During the spring of 2012 I documented a massive die-off of dolphins in Peru and discovered widespread hunting of dolphins by Peruvian fishermen. We are currently working to test dolphin-eating consumers for mercury levels in hopes of ending the dolphin hunt by proving that eating dolphin meat is not healthful.

The other area in which I work more and more is researching and exploring the contamination in the marine food chain and is threatening both dolphins and now humans.

In my early years as a journalist I worked for CBS News, United Pres International and was news director and anchor at the CBS affiliate in Anchorage, AK. I graduated from Choate School, then Tulane University and did a year at Columbia School of Law.

I live in Saint Augustine, FL with my wife Deborah and our Chow Chou Chou, and cats Gracie and Buddy.