John Hoopes years ago worked with Dr. John Lilly on his Janus Project, exploring the possibilities of human-dolphin communication. Later he became part of an Oceanic Society expedition to San Ignacio Lagoon on the Baja California peninsula of Mexico one winter to experience and study the gray whale migration, where they give birth and prepare the newborns for the long journey back to the Arctic in the spring. He also explored the Alaskan Southwest Passage, observing pods of orcas that live there' as well as exploring the available glaciers. All this furnished and inspired his already fertile imagination to create The Dolphins of Oceanus.

He and his wife recently spent seven years living in a little village on Lake Chapala, Mexico, where thousands of Americans and Canadians have retired and comingle with the natives who've lived there for centuries.They started and ran a construction company that built sixteen houses for these norteamericanos. In doing so, they also became an intimate part of the comedy and intrigue between Mexicans, gringos and the newly-elected PAN party bureaucracy during this real estate bonanza.