A troubled fourteen-year-old girl named Alyssa (Carly Schroeder) has been living with her grandmother Lucy (Katharine Ross) since the death of her mother a year before. After being suspended from school for smoking, Alyssa is brought to the Bahamas to live with Hawk (Adrian Dunbar), the father she never knew she had. Alyssa's arrival on the island comes at a decisively inconvenient time for Hawk, a dolphin researcher, whose prickly personality puts him at odds with local politicians, who feel that the local economy needs good relations with tourists. It is a difficult relationship at first between Alyssa and her father, but Tamika (Christine Adams (actress)), Hawk's girlfriend, and Daniel (George Harris (actor)), Tamika's father, smooth the way. Alyssa soon adjusts to island life, and she discovers the gift that she shares with her father for communicating with dolphins, a skill which leads her into a powerful relationship with a wild dolphin which her father, for legitimate scientific reasons, cannot condone. But when the powers-that-be threaten to close down her father's research station, it is Alyssa and her wild friend who hold the key, and they have the power to bring all parties together.