ELIANA – THE SECRET OF THE DOLPHINS

The winner is Severino, known as Jabá, a boy born in a small town in the arid countryside of Pernambuco. His heartfelt essay moves the contest organizers. He simply wants to see the ocean for the first time. He chooses his science teacher, Eliana, because of her classes. Eliana is an oceanographer who’s passionate about marine life, especially dolphins. Her dream is to swim with them one day. 

Their journey takes them to the Riviera, in Mexico. After getting to know part of the region and after Jabá enjoys himself in the Caribbean Sea, he convinces the contest organizers to take them to Cozumel to fulfill his teacher’s dream of swimmimg with dolphins.  

There, they meet a dolphin named Garrafinha, who starts to behave strangely, persistently making signals to Jabá. No one, not even the experienced trainers, understand what’s happening. The dolphin keeps swimming in a single direction and reveals a mysterious pyramid-shaped stone. 

After much effort to understand the dolphin’s signals, an accident happens. A poorly closed gate allows Garrafinha to escape. But to everyone’s surprise, instead of swimming into the open ocean, he calls Jabá to follow him. Jabá, Eliana and the trainers – an old Mayan man and a young woman, take a boat from the park and set off to find out where the animal wants to take them.

Garrafinha swims at high speed, on the way, he meets family members who were waiting by the bay’s entrance. They all swim together straight to Tulum, an incredible ruin of a Mayan temple on the edge of the Caribbean Sea. They begin an exploration inside the pyramid.

Right at the beginning of their journey, the group is interrupted by a sinister figure, the temple guardian. An ancient warrior and enemy of the Mayans who is over 1000 years old, alongside other faithful guardians, like the ferocious Caribbean reef sharks. The sharks attack the dolphin, while the old guardian tries to prevent the discovery of an important object in any way he can. 

Finally, after searching for a long time, the group finds the object. An incredible Mayan crystal skull that has the power to project images of the past and the future. Teacher Eliana recognizes an incredible place in the images, the Dolphin Bay, located on an oceanic island near the Brazilian coast. It’s Fernando de Noronha. She finds this odd, since she’s never been to the island. In fact, it’s Noronha from a thousand years ago.

Suddenly, an incredible force comes out of the skull and pulls them inside. They go back in time and are in the middle of a ritual done by an unknown people, where Eliana is tied up and will be offered to the gods. The person making the offering is the old man, now the guardian of the ruins. Jabá also lived at this time and manages to save Eliana with the help of a Mayan girl.

A great adventure begins on the Island. The little Maian reveals that all those sacrifices are an attempt to find the crystal skull. She, however, knows that the secret is kept at the dolphin bay. She has observed nature and noticed how those dolphins behave, spinning around their own axis, just like our sacred planet. The girl has a map that describes a cave where the wind of time blows. 

They go inside this cave and discover ancient inscriptions, where the spinning dolphins point to a map of the “treasure”. Together they manage to rescue the skull that was guarded by the dolphins at the bottom of the bay. This skull, if kept safe by good people, can do unlimited good, but in the hands of evil, has a terrible power of destruction. 

Once the skull is rescued, they instantly go back to the present, and discover that the little Maian girl lives to this day, always as a child, she is the assistant of the dolphin’s trainer. Now in the hands of good people, the skull projects images of a preserved land and a future filled with environmental responsibility.