Jim McDonough
Author Jim McDonough has been a member of the Speak Dolphin Communication Research team since 2012. His friendship with Jack Kassewitz gave him a connection to dolphins. Jim’s open mind and loving spirit are strongly linked with dolphin intelligence and culture. Offering his help to Jack as an archivist, editor, historian, and research assistant, his image became famous as the ‘Human as seen by Dolphin‘ in 2015.
Having grown up in the divergent cultures of Japan, China, and Canada, Jim developed an encyclopedic knowledge of world cultures. Jim’s brother is eco-visionary architect William McDonough. Jim adopted his brother’s desire to create “…a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, water, soil, and power—economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.”
Jim was already acutely aware of the terrible effects of human mismanagement of the oceans and their inhabitants. He realized that dolphins are the ‘canary in the coal mine’; sounding the alarm that if the oceans collapse, terrestrial devastation is not far behind.
“Two of the greatest issues facing everyone, everything, and everywhere on Earth now are climate change and Artificial Intelligence. Both Jack and I see disturbing parallels in humankind’s mistreatment of sentient animals and misuse of artificial intelligence. Our novel expresses our deep desire to heal the rift between human and all things “non-human”. We weave our story into a fast-moving tale that we hope will inspire possible solutions. Mitakuye Oyasin – We are all related.”
