Venus Among the Fishes is a 1995 children's book by Elizabeth Hall and Scott O'Dell. It concerns a herd of Atlantic white-sided dolphins whose numbers are dwindling due to predation from a group of orcas. Two dolphin siblings, Coral and Snapper, set out from their home in Glacier Strait. Their goals are to find their brother Silver, who set out on his own long ago and might be able to help fend off the orcas, and to find a new place for the herd to live.
Venus Among the Fishes contains examples of:
- Dedication: "For David, who has just discovered the world beneath the sea, and to my dolphin swimming companions Lil Bit, Dingy, Jessica, Sarah, and Samantha."
- Friendly, Playful Dolphin: Coral hates and fears humans at first, but after she's captured, she learns to like and trust them. She enjoys doing tricks for an audience and forms a close bond with one of her trainers, Mark.
- Heroic Dolphin: Coral and Snapper set out to become heroes by saving their herd. Then Coral becomes another kind of heroic dolphin by being trained to rescue human divers.
- Keep Away: Coral, Snapper, and their new friend Sea Fan the spinner dolphin play Keep-away with a piece of kelp. Eventually Coral lets Snapper grab the kelp, then plays tug-of-war with it.
- Language Barrier: An interspecies version. Spray swallows a metal ball that an audience member threw into the tank. It gets lodged at the entrance to her first stomach. The other dolphins whistle in their loudest, deepest voices to get the attention of the humans, and Silver jerks his head at Spray, but the trainer thinks Silver and Spray are just having a lovers' spat. By the time the humans finally figure out that there's something wrong with Spray, it's too late to save her.
- Literary Allusion Title: To the D.H. Lawrence poem "Whales Weep Not!"
- Sapient Eat Sapient: Orcas have no qualms about attacking dolphins, even though their languages are partly mutually intelligible. They also eat baby whales, even though whales are also sapient and can create sound pictures.
- Searching for the Lost Relative: Silver went off in search of adventure three years ago and hasn't been seen since. He was the quickest and cleverest of the dolphins, and his parents hope that if Coral and Snapper find him, he'll be able to help everyone get to safety. Coral eventually finds Silver in captivity in a dolphin show. He's happy with his mate Spray and his son Flasher and has no desire to leave.
- Starfish Language: The dolphins have a handful of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and interjections, but they communicate mostly through sound pictures, in which a dolphin uses sonar to recreate an image. They rarely speak in sentences and don't seem to have much grammar.
- Threatening Shark: Coral, Snapper, and Sea Fan are chased by six sharks. They narrowly escape into a kelp forest.
- Too Unhappy to Be Hungry: After the orca White Fang is captured by humans and put in a tank, he's so lonely, bored, and miserable that he loses his appetite and eats only a few fish a day. He gets thinner and thinner until Mark cuts the fence of his enclosure, releasing him into the ocean.
