Dave Anderson, also known affectionately as Captain Dave of Dana Point, is deeply devoted to sharing his love of the ocean and the teeming marine wildlife in Southern California. While this area is abundant with dolphins and whales, most of us who live on land don't know what a diverse population of cetacean species exist offshore.

For this reason, Dave is on a mission to expand our awareness through direct experience with pods. One primary way that he offers contact with cetaceans is through his boat tour company, Captain Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari.

It was Dave's love of the dolphins and whales that led him to invest five years in making his first film, Wild Dolphins and Whales of Southern California. He won seven film awards for his documentary at the International Wildlife Film Festival (IWFF), known as the 'Sundance' of the wildlife film genre.

The Pacific Ocean environment in Southern California is a gathering place for a variety of cetacean species because of immense fish and other marine wildlife thriving in its nutrient-rich ecosystem. Yet even here, cetaceans are at considerable risk of dying as bycatch from commercial ocean harvesting practices.

Fishing operations take their toll on cetacean populations in our locale, as they do in other highly-fertile areas of the ocean. According to a report from Karen Baragona of World Wildlife Fund's species conservation program, nearly 1,000 porpoises, dolphins and whales around the world die each day, from being trapped in fishing nets and gear.

Dave is committed to bringing more awareness about these magnificent creatures while continuing his own creative process of exploration through film and video. In this he is showing the way for a more sustainable vision of the future, where we learn to fulfill our own human dreams while benefiting other intelligent life on the planet as well.

In this issue, we are saluting an ardent advocate and a man of passion in action. Like his environmental hero, John Muir, Dave is inspiring us to remember our love of the wild, and through it, deepening our desire to preserve its wonder and beauty.

Awareness: How do you see yourself?

Dave: It's all centered around one main thing... to create an awareness of what's going on - we have an amazing abundance of wildlife, in the form of dolphins and whales that are off our coast. The average person is busy living his/her life and doesn't know what I know, so I am really trying to help protect these animals by creating an awareness that they are out there. We have more dolphins off the coast of Southern California than in Florida, Alaska or Hawaii combined.

We now have the best year-round whale watching in the world in Southern California. About six years ago the blue whales started showing up here in record numbers and they have been showing up ever since. We know they are feeding here, but we don't know why.

The information is sketchy - we don't know if it is a normal thing for them to move around and change their area. The krill may have gotten sparse in some areas and they decided to try other areas.

We do know that they started to show up in Monterey, California about twenty years ago. Then they left and started to come here. Now they are showing up in Monterey and here. We just don't know how long it's going to be happening, we just have to appreciate it while they are here.

Awareness: Which whales birth up in Alaska?

Dave: That's the grey whale, it's passing by right now, on its annual migration.

Awareness: Where do the blue whales do their birthing?

Dave: We believe they have their calves in a place called the Costa Rica Dome, it is an area of upwelling that moves around, but it's approximately 500 miles west of Costa Rica.

Awareness: When you say upwelling, is this one of the very vital zones where there is a lot of food?

Dave: Exactly, it is a nutrient-rich area where there's a lot of food for them. About fifteen percent of the Earth has upwelling, where cold, nutrient-rich water comes up and these sites represent about 50% of the food that man eats - the fish and other seafood that are taken from the ocean areas of upwelling. California has areas of upwelling.

Upwellings are usually areas of deep water that go to areas of shallow water very quickly and a lot of currents move the water around. The nutrients are from down deep, but without sunshine these nutrients don't produce much. When they are brought up to the surface these nutrients become a fertile area for plankton and then the bigger animals follow up the food chain.

Awareness: Tell us about your documentary film, "Wild Dolphins and Whales of Southern California."

Dave: I spent five years making the film, and it won seven awards at the International Wildlife Film Festival. It was a finalist at Wildscreen in England, which is kind of like the 'green' Oscars.

They had all the best wildlife filmmakers sitting at the same table in the front of the auditorium and I was sitting there with all these people who had made films for National Geographic or the BBC and it was so amazing.

I did not feel like I belonged there, but it was really one of the thrills of my life to have been chosen to be a finalist for my film. It did really well at two of the three most important wildlife film festivals in the world so it was quite special to have my film chosen.

Awareness: I worked in the arts for a long time and have a special fondness for what it takes independent filmmakers to produce a piece that they feel passionately about. I wanted to ask you about the effect of making this film on your life, from pursuing your passion...

Dave: You know, that's a very good question. From the time when I was probably sixteen, I wanted to make films - it was a big dream I had, but you know, for whatever reason, you don't get around to the thing that you really want to do because life is going on and you have to make a living.

I tried to write a couple of screenplays when I was young, but never really accomplished what I had hoped to do, and kind of set it aside and moved on with life. Then I became a Christian and gave my life to the Lord and something really happened right there.

The Lord made all the dreams that I had when I was younger begin to come together when this new career started for me, you know, taking people out to see the dolphins and whales. When I started doing that, I just naturally wanted to help the animals.

I love to photograph and film animals anyway, and so many people had such a hard time envisioning what was off our coast. It was hard for them to get a sense of what I was witnessing every day and I wanted them to experience it too.

I started filming and showing people and thought, you know I'll just put together a simple little film with some underwater footage and dolphins. So I began filming them underwater, then editing the video and showing it to people and it just kept growing from there.

Then as I was showing it, someone said you ought to have some narration and I thought, this is turning into a big project, but okay, and I just kept going. The more I did the more I wanted to do, and I wanted it to be all-inclusive about the area.

About the time I started the film, I went to Yosemite. I had never been there before and just fell in love with the place. When I learned about John Muir and what he had done, basically protecting it with his writings, sharing the place with other people and getting them to come and experience it.

I decided right there that I wanted to be the John Muir of the ocean off Southern California. I would do the same thing for the dolphins and whales that he had done for the trees and forests in Yosemite. He ensured that all the beauty there would be protected with his work. It was a moment when you go, wow; it's what you're supposed to do.

God has blessed me with an incredible job that I love and I get to be part of so many people's lives and share with them a peak experience of their life. For many people, I've had them tell me it's the best day of their lives or it's the most awesome thing they've ever seen. It really rates up high for a lot of people and I get to be part of that and it's very special to me, I'm very thankful.

Awareness: You said that really well. Let me ask about why this is so for many people?

Dave: The average person hasn't gotten to see a pod of dolphins just a few inches away from them, riding the pressure wave on the front of the boat. That experience alone is pretty special.

If you ask me why that is, you have got an animal that doesn't even know you and is letting you be part of its pod, welcoming you by coming over to the boat and swimming right next to you, it's very vulnerable. This allowing us to come in is why we love them.

You know people love dogs because they are so non-judgmental, most of the time they're loyal and friendly. Dolphins are the only animals that will come over as a group to another species; they will welcome us as part of their group and play.

Dolphins love to ride pressure waves made by the boat riding through the water. They learn how to do that as a calf with their mother and it's how they can keep up with the pod, since they can't swim fast. When they are older they will do it in front of a whale or a boat.

The whales are amazing too. They are the biggest animal that has ever lived on earth and they are still alive. The blue whales grow up to 110 feet long, the largest one ever measured, but the biggest one I've seen out here was probably 90 feet and that's huge!

So when people get to actually see a blue whale for the first time, or any whale really, it's something they're not going to ever forget. If we're fortunate enough to have one that comes right over to the boat or where we can really get a good look at it, it's definitely a peak experience.

With our boat, we've made it even more likely to have an incredible experience because we've created this underwater viewing pod so they can look at the dolphins eye-to-eye. The underwater viewing pod is in the front of the boat where the dolphins are riding the pressure wave.

Awareness: I have found that close dolphin encounters usually reduce people to one-word superlatives that point to the extraordinary nature of the experience, like "incredible!" This leads me to recall the hypothesis of E.O. Wilson, the eminent Harvard ethno-botanist, of biophilia, that we have an innate affinity with nature.

Dave: Well, there is a connection we feel with an animal when we look into their eyes especially. It's not always a warm fuzzy feeling when you look into the eyes of a wild animal, but with the dolphins, they are aware, they will interact - to splash a person or come over to get a better look at someone.

Our boat is low to the water, and a person can reach out and connect with them - sometimes the dolphins will come right up and brush against a person's hand deliberately. I get emails from them telling me what was happening for them after being on the boat - that they were in tears or speechless.

It's pretty intense to be close to wild animals that are responsive like the dolphins when they make a conscious choice to join in and let us be a part of their group for a while.

Awareness: It seems like we do get excited about being able to be close literally and to feel a sense of connection with other kind that have a good intent toward us.

Dave: Yes, and yet there are also different kinds of people, not everyone is on the same page. We have found dolphins dead from gun shot wounds so we know it happens. While all human beings don't share that same feeling, I feel most people want a connection between themselves and an animal. Why else would Flipper have been such a popular show?

You know, I wrote a script about a blue whale calf, a gill net boat and a small boy.

Awareness: It's called Blue?

Dave: Yes. I've written a script for it and I'm hoping it gets produced. Right now, there's some Hollywood interest in producing it. The main purpose of this film is to stop the killing. About a 1,000 dolphins and whales are dying in nets around the world daily.

Awareness: I loved the synopsis by the way. It grabbed me, partly because of my interest, but I feel like you're bringing attention to some very important issues with this story, and that will have widespread appeal. Tell us some more about what the nets are doing so people are aware…

Dave: There are many different kinds of nets, but the drift gill nets are one of the worst; they can be over 30 miles long and are responsible for a lot of the dolphins and whales being caught and killed. They are used all over the world, including off the coast of California.

Here they are not allowed to be more than a mile long and they have these pingers on them that are supposed to scare the dolphins, but they don't know if the whales can hear them. Despite that, dolphins and whales still get caught in the nets.

California has the most regulations worldwide, and it's more of a model for other places, but we're still catching them in the nets, just not as many as other places. The U.N. has called for a complete ban on them, but they're still being used all over.

What we really need is to have labeling on all the fish, so we know how they were caught. That would be a really good first step to help consumers make better choices. At every market they could have something that explained whether the type of fishery is killing a lot of other types of animals.

It used to be said for every pound of swordfish there was a pound of dolphin, because that is how many had to die to get the swordfish. For every swordfish caught in a gill net, probably 1000 other fish are caught. Many of them are thrown back into the water, some of them are dead and some of them are alive. It's very good at catching their target fish, but it's also very wasteful.

What the film does is take you into what it's like to be on one of the gill net boats. The whale calf begins to follow the boat around after its mother is killed, representing the guilt following mankind around for all the pillaging we have been doing in our oceans and destroying them.

I think if Blue can get made, it is really going to make a difference. I took a long time writing it, just as I took a long time, five years, to make the dolphins and whales documentary. I've wanted to do fiction and felt like when this story came to me it was God who put it in my heart and said, "Do it and do it now!"

God gave me the desire of my heart to make films and it led me to think that maybe I can do something for the dolphins and whales through writing and directing films. A lot of people don't know this, but Jacques Cousteau's first love was film, even before the ocean. The two came together later. It was kind of that way for me too.

Another plan I'm working on right now is to have several different live feeds from around the world. Next is to have one in the lagoons down in Baja where the grey whales go to mate and have their calves. When we get WhaleWatchingTV.com to the level that I think we will, with live feeds from all over the world - New Zealand, South Africa, the South Pacific, and Hawaii - there are a whole lot of people who are going to experience dolphins and whales in an entirely new way.

For more information on Captain Dave's excursions and activities, see www.dolphinsafari.com and www.WhaleWatchingTV.com.

The Dana Point Festival of Whales 2010 is held on two weekends in March. For more information see www.dpfestivalofwhales.com.

Donna is a writer who loves the intelligent beings known as cetaceans. Her book, "Coming Home to Calm," is a celebration of the beauty of creation (available on Amazon). For more information, go to www.donnastrong.com.