Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm's story of Luna, an adolescent killer whale (orca) who hung around Nootka Sound in British Columbia 2002-2006, seeking human contact, nudging kayaks, playing in the ballast water, coming up to docks and boats to get his nose scratched and his tongue massaged.
The Canadian department of fisheries tried to prevent human contact. They didn't want him acclimatized to people. Luna however would not be dissuaded, and started playing with the stewards the department sent out in boats to keep people away. The stewards ended up playing with the whale, quite against their own instructions.
Efforts were made to lead the whale back to his pod, whenever they were in the area. Luna wasn't interested. Nobody was sure if it would work anyway. Presumably he knew where they were, and probably they did too.
At one point a plan was hatched to capture Luna and sell him to MarineWorld. The local First Nations tribe intervened.
The movie has tons of footage of Luna interacting with people, looking at them, sitting quietly while they reach their whole arms into his mouth to scratch his tongue. Playing with a hose, drenching the loggers on a barge. Pushing boats around, fetching sticks, riding the wakes of boats or positioning himself in front of a boat balancing his tail on the bow so the boat pushes him through the water.
Remarkable.
In the end, a logging barge accidentally ran over him and killed him with their propeller. It was sad.
As they say in the movie, NASA is spending all this money looking for intelligent life in outer space. A mere fraction of that budget could've been diverted to an alien intelligence who was actively seeking out human contact, right here on Earth.
Who is the intelligent species?
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