This document is part of the Ocean Girl Archive — Last update: 2010-09-11 — source — meta
Jason and Brett Bates move with their scientist mother, Dr. Dianne Bates, to ORCA, a manmade marine research station in the Australian Great Reef. The boys go with her on an excursion to locate a whale and shoot a monitor into it, enabling the scientists to compare the whale’s brain patterns to its song. Jason is supposed to shoot the monitor into the whale, but stops when a girl swims in front of the whale.
Brett is accidentally set adrift in a boat, and, during a storm, the boat is washed up on Neri’s island. Neri discovers the boy, sick from eating poisonous berries. She gives him an antidote and places him in his boat, pushing it back into the sea. When Brett is rescued, he tells his brother, Jason, about Neri.
Brett and friends initiate newcomer Vanessa. She retaliates by releasing the boat Brett is playing in, sending it out to sea.
Brett and Jason take the boat out in order to mark illegal drift nets on the reef. When Neri is caught in one of the nets, Jason rescues her. Neri agrees to let the boys visit her island. She tells them that her father was with her when she was younger, but he was drowned, and now she lives alone, with Charley the humpback whale as her only friend.
Jason and Vanessa, one of the other teenagers on the research station and a suspicious troublemaker, are diving partners. When they are out in the boat, Neri approaches Jason and tells him to go back to the research station, because Charley has warned her that an earthquake and a tidal wave are coming. They return, and, during the earthquake, Jason’s friend Damion and Commander Lucas’s daughter are trapped in a leaking area of the structure – until Damion blows the door with sounds from his electric guitar.
Winston, Dr. Bates’s co-worker, persuades Commander Lucas and Dr. Bates, who are usually bickering, to try to be nice to each other for the benefit of the research. Jason goes alone to Neri’s island, where she tells him that, when she was a little girl, she fell off a cliff into the ocean and was rescued by Charley. Her father told her that Charley would take care of her and that she should hide from humans because she was different.
A helicopter brings two real-estate developers to the marine research station on their way to an island they plan to turn into a tourist resort. When Jason realizes that the island is Neri’s island, he offers to be their guide. Once on the island, Jason and Neri create situations that discourage the men from ever wanting to return to this particular island. Back at the research station, the suspicious Vanessa blackmails another girl, Jody, into spying on Jason and Brett.
When Charley appears to be in distress, Neri comes to the station for Jason. Jason discovers a toxic dump and a leaking chemical that affects the nervous system. He administers an antidote to Neri and learned that Charley will be all right because of his thick skin. It is determined that Zenko, the company that provides the money for the research laboratories, was responsible for the spill, but it was an accident. Neri tells Jason that she wants to visit the research station and see his world.
Neri visits the research station. Brett and Jason obtain a fake ID card, making it appear that she is a day worker on ORCA. They steal a uniform, which makes Vanessa even more suspicious, because it is her uniform. Brett and Jason show Neri around, but they become separated and Neri wanders into the boys’ mother’s laboratory, where Dr. Bates is observing the movements of the humpback she is studying – Neri’s friend Charley.
The children from ORCA go on shore leave to the mainland, and Neri goes with them. Neri helps a young aborigine boy who is being bothered by bullies. Neri’s contact with the everyday world has exposed her to the idea of romance, and, on returning to ORCA, she experiences a new emotion – jealousy. In the lab, Dr. Bates and Winston observe Charley talking – and then listening. They determine that he is communicating with something, and order new equipment to help them determine what that other life form could be.
Dr. Bates is on the verge of a major breakthrough in her research on Charley when the transmitter on the whale fails and she undertakes a dangerous dive to reset the transmitter. When Dr. Bates gets into trouble, Charley alerts Neri, who rescues her. Jason and Brett must now disclose to their mother and Winston the true nature of Neri’s identity. They plead with them to keep the secret, fearful that Neri will become a research specimen.
When Dr. Bates meets Neri, she is convinced that Neri’s existence must be hidden. She is also drawn to her. For the first time, Neri doesn’t return to her island but spends the night on board as one of the family. Dr. Bates and Winston test Neri’s skills, as well as her DNA structure, in an effort to determine her origins. Under the spell of modern life with her new family, Neri grows deaf to Charley’s calls. When research material, including tapes of Charley’s songs, are stolen, Brett believes an industrial spy is on board and begins an investigation.
They find the spy who works for UBRI, a group of rival researchers who want to trap Charley in a cove. The rest of the whales in the area leave for the annual migration, but Charley waits for Neri, who is absorbed with her life on ORCA. Lured into the bay, Charley is imprisoned by an electric fence. When Charley attempts to break through the fence, Neri receives an electrical shock. She returns to the island and finds Charley missing. Jason and Brett arrive to help in Charley’s rescue. Meanwhile, Commander Lucas discovers Neri’s secret, and his sense of duty demands that he report his discovery to his superiors.
Jason and Brett tell the other kids on ORCA about Neri, and they offer to help in the rescue mission. They raid the UBRI scientists’ headquarters and free Charley, who is led by Neri back out to sea and safety. Dr. Bates’s tests reveal that Neri is not human, and Commander Lucas’s daughter convinces him not to report any of what he knows about Neri. Neri must decide whether to stay with her new family on land or return to the ocean. She chooses Charley and the ocean and bids goodbye, but she has been touched by her human encounters and will remember her friends forever.