In the first game, the player can choose only three out of eight available species (because the Narwhal, Spectacled Porpoise, and Amazon River Dolphin do not appear in the first game) to have as partners. The first partner the player can obtain is a Bottlenose Dolphin that had somehow become separated from its pod and became confused, because its echolocation was befuddled by the shallow waters of the Lagoon and Coral Forest. The player helps get it to deeper waters and thus gains its trust, meaning that the player will always have at least one dolphin partner all throughout the game.