While completing his master's thesis, he met Henry Truby, a linguist and acoustic phonetician once part of John Lilly's Communication Research Institute, where attempts were made to teach dolphins to speak English. Truby and Ric O'Feldman [a trainer for the Flipper TV series] formed the World Dolphin Foundation and kept the dolphins Florida and Liberty in the Mashta Island Lagoon, some 1000 yards from Nixon's Key Biscayne Whitehouse. Hyson joined the group and swam many hours with the dolphins while developing dolphin communication interfaces and other projects.