Joe Noonan, Dolphin Whisperer

“Swimming with wild dolphins and whales, in their home, on their terms, is a profoundly life-changing experience“

Joe Noonan is a life coach, international speaker and shamanic nature guide who loves sharing the adventure of discovery and cocreation. He has an innate ability to help people move easily into a more joyful and exuberant experience of life. He loves sharing the excitement of the dolphins, the ocean and nature with people of all ages.

He leads private boat and yacht charters around the globe including Hawaii, the Bahamas & the Caribbean, as well as spiritual nature retreats around the world. He will teach you how to swim, snorkel, freedive and feel more at home on land and in the sea than you ever dreamed possible.

Seventh of eight kids, Joe grew up on a farm in Southern Maine. As a teenager, during a family counseling session over the suicide of his brother, he had the profound realization that we are the custodians of our own reality, and began a lifelong passion of moving beyond conventional limitations and exploring his full potential. He knew at an early age that his passion was sharing the beauty of nature and adventure. At the age of 23, to challenge himself and his growing trust in the universal flow of life, he hitchhiked cross-country from Maine to California and again from Mexico to Washington. Feeling a call to deepen his connection to nature, he cut down fifty spruce trees in his mid-twenties, hand built a log cabin and lived off the grid in the northern Maine woods for a year.

Over the next decade Joe had a private healing practice, working with acupressure, flower essences and as a hands-on healer in local churches and hospitals. Realizing that 90% of the illnesses he was treating had their origin in the mind, he studied psycho-synthesis, NLP and The Option Method, and started his own private psychotherapy practice.

To balance his work as a healer he worked as a wilderness guide for several Outward Bound Schools, leading weeklong hiking, canoeing, backpacking and sailing adventures for individuals, families and corporations. He was surprised to see that people with little to no outdoor experience could thrive in an outdoor setting.

Taking what he learned from his holistic and wilderness experience, in 1990 he started his own consulting company that teaches his own brand of right/left brain team-building, leadership and communication programs to businesses, corporations and universities including Harvard, Cornell and MIT. He has taken executive teams from Fortune 500 companies on leadership retreats around the world, including such adventures as climbing, rafting, sailing and swimming with dolphins and sharks. He has worked as a life coach with many senior executives from different backgrounds and industries, helping them bring more balance and joy into their lives.

In 1995, Joe had his first swim with a pod of wild dolphins in Hawaii and stepped out of the water a changed man. He committed himself to a life of directness to nature. Since that time, he’s brought corporate groups and families from all over the world to swim with wild dolphins. He’s called the ‘Dolphin Whisperer’ for the way dolphins respond to him.

In 2008, on a sacred ceremony on an island in the great lakes, he was given the name Nimbeesh, aka ‘Merman’ by a group of Native American Elders, recognizing him as one of the Mer-people, those who bring together the tribes of the land with the tribes of the sea.

7SKY Surf magazine: “So what attracts us to the ocean ? What are we looking for when we leave the shore and move towards vaster horizons ? Waterman Joebaby, living between the Bahamas and Hawaii, embodies the answer to these questions. He is one of those for whom the surface was not enough. Meeting him and diving deep into his mind and heart might very well trigger some of our deeper feelings of ‘longing’ and ‘belonging’. Read the 7SKY interview here

For the past twenty five years, Joe has been bringing people to swim with wild dolphins in Hawaii and the Bahamas, where he lives. He loves sharing the joy of being in the ocean and invites you to come on an adventure with him!

“Life is an invitation to have fun; and nature, the sea and the dolphins are wonderful allies in our quest to feel fully alive!“