Play Ball!

In this video, I am training Nemo to catch and toss a ball. Notice on the left, further away, my colleague Ricardo is training Ziggy to do the same thing. Our goal is to eventually train Ziggy and Nemo to "play ball" by tossing the ball between each other and two trainers, and even a guest.

Training Nemo - UPDATED

Nemo is a very high energy dolphin, so we decided to train him to do a double-front flip rather than a single. To start training him to do this behavior, we focused on motivating Nemo following a target: a long pole with a little buoy on the end that Nemo follows, in this case, with his mouth or "rostrum." Our first step was to train Nemo to complete one rotation (flip) under the water’s surface. Then, after he understood what we wanted him to do, we added the second rotation. The next part of the process was to motivate Nemo to take the flip out of the water and follow the target pole. After Nemo learned to flip out of the water, we used the "bridge" (a whistle) and "primary reinforcement" (fish) to perfect Nemo’s double flip. One day, Nemo over rotated by an additional half-flip, and we decided to adopt this change in the criteria for the behavior: we decided to use the bridge and primary reinforcement to complete the third rotation. Now Nemo has the most amazing triple front flip. It’s WICKED!.

Blue Whales: Larger than Life

Imagine a creature so tiny it can freely climb through your arteries. Now imagine how that creature would feel standing beside you—a living, breathing human over 2500 times its own weight. You don’t have to guest star on an episode of The Magic School Bus to experience this feeling for yourself—just dive into the ocean and find the nearest blue whale.

Larger than Life

And back to those arteries—a person could, theoretically, crawl through a blue whale’s aorta. Its heart only beats once every ten seconds, and when it does, it’s strong enough to detect from two miles away. But that’s nothing compared to its famous song, which can travel over 700 miles through the ocean.

First Super Predator Was a Hawk-Eyed Shrimp

The world’s first apex predator, a beast called Anomalocaris, was no shrimp. Well, it sort of was, but not to the tiny critters that inhabited the planet’s oceans 500 million years ago. Giant eyes with thousands of lenses and extraordinary vision made the marine monster all the more formidable, according to a new study.

Some 500 million years ago, a giant shrimp-like creature prowled the earth’s oceans, then home to every living animal on the planet. Thought to have been the world’s first apex predator, at 3 feet long Anomalocaris dwarfed its contemporaries—the tiny trilobites, jellyfish and early vertebrates of the Cambrian Era. As if its razor-edged teeth and powerful claws weren’t fearsome enough, scientists have now discovered that the marine monster boasted some of the sharpest—and, in proportion to its size, largest—eyes in history.

Hurricane Preparedness Training - Updated

When there is a hurricane, debris and large waves in the lagoon are a threat to dolphin safety. We train the dolphins to come out of the lagoon voluntarily so they are relaxed when we need to move them. We also want the staff to be well-trained in the evacuation procedures so that when it is time to deal with the emergency, they know exactly what to do. In this video, we are training the dolphins to come out of the water onto a platform. This will allow us to take them, one-by-one, on stretchers to the above-ground, indoor pool. The pool is located in a building which is designed to withstand hurricanes up to Class 5, and removal to the building during big storms ensures the animals' safety until the storm passes. We do routine dress-rehearsals for evacuations to ensure that the dolphins know what is happening and can participate without stress.

Sperm Whales Caught Napping

Luna's Dance

Luna's Ball Dance 

Elvis is one of the senior trainers here at Dolphin Cove. When we attended the International Marine Animal Trainers Association conference this year, their opening video included a ball-dance behavior. Luna has recently demonstrated a great interest in playing with balls, so Elvis decided to train Luna to do the same behavior. Luna loved learning the ball dance, and as you can see in the video, she really enjoys doing it!

Boaters save a humpback whale

Incredible video about rescuing a young whale completely tangled in a fishing net.

Happy to be free the whale puts on a spectacular show as thanks for its freedom.

Winter's wildlife 'visitors' to California's Central Coast

Source: SFGate.com

Gray Whale

Appearing acts: Some 22,000 gray whales – virtually the world's entire population – will migrate within two miles of the Monterey coastline as they head to their winter breeding waters in Baja California, then pass by again in spring as the whales return to their summer smorgasbord in the Bering Sea.
Monterey Bay Whale Watch, which offers gray whale-watching cruises from mid-December through mid-April, notes that the whales' preference for shallow water brings them closer to the shore in Monterey than other sites along the coast. Their regular breathing pattern  –  blowing three to five times in brief intervals (15-30 seconds) before raising a fluke and submerging for three to five minutes, according to the American Cetacean Society (ACS)  –  is also helpful for spotting the at sea. And their enormous size doesn't hurt, either: Adult males can be 46 feet in length  –  females a bit longer  –  while both weigh between 30 and 40 tons.

Fun facts: Although most mating and calving takes place in the lagoons of Baja California, the ACS says both have been observed during migration. Size matters: Gray whales become sexually mature between ages 5 and 11, or when they've grown 36 to 39 feet. The ACS also describes their courting and mating behavior as "complex," noting it frequently involves "three or more whales of mixed sexes."
Sadly for the gray whales, their migration also causes a spike in sightings of killer whales, which hang out year round in the deeper waters of the bay, but love to munch on a gray whale when they get the chance.

Antarctica's Biggest Mysteries: Secrets of a Frozen World

Antarctica's Alexander Island mountain range, snapped during a NASA research flight in October 2011.  Credit: Michael Studinger, NASA.

Source: Our Amazing Planet

One hundred years ago this week, on a fine summer afternoon, Norwegian Roald Amundsen and four travel-weary companions plunged a bright flag atop a spindly pole into the Antarctic ice, marking their claim as the first humans to set foot at the bottom of the world. The South Pole was theirs.

"That moment will certainly be remembered by all of us who stood there," the Norwegian explorer wrote in his account of the arduous trek. On Dec. 14, 1911, two months after they set out from the continent's coast, the men had reached their goal — a frozen plain of endless white in the middle of the highest, windiest, coldest, driest and loneliest continent on Earth.

A century after Amundsen planted the flag — beating out Englishman Robert Falcon Scott's doomed expedition by a full month — an explosion of technological progress has transformed the scope of human knowledge of Antarctica.

CREDIT: NOAA/Department of Commerce, Steve Nicklas, NOS, NGS.

Amundsen and crew take an observation at the pole in an image from the Norwegian explorer's "The South Pole," an account of his historic trek. 

Ocean Voyagers 3D Trailer

"The heart of this film is really a relationship between our mother humpback and her calf," notes the director Feo Pitcairn, "we had unlimited access to these animals, filming them day after day, we have developed a real bond of trust. This allowed us to obtain rare and intimate images, like the calf and the mother's care rests on the sandy bottom of the ocean We're very excited to premiere the film in 3D at the Centre for Independent Theatre -. seeing this material for big screen in 3D is the closest thing to experience first hand what we experienced during filming underwater."

Antarctic Killer Whales May Seek Spa-Like Relief in the Tropics

ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2011) — NOAA researchers offer a novel explanation for why a type of Antarctic killer whale performs a rapid migration to warmer tropical waters. Scientists believe that warmer waters help the whales regenerate skin faster, after spending months coated with algae in colder waters.

"The whales are traveling so quickly, and in such a consistent track, that it is unlikely they are foraging for food or giving birth," said John Durban, lead author from NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. "We believe these movements are likely undertaken to help the whales regenerate skin tissue in a warmer environment with less heat loss."

Dolphin calf rescued and released

From: Sarasota Dolphin Research Program

SDRP Director Randy Wells provides an interesting glimpse into the difficulty of mounting a highly successful dolphin rescue (below). Usually dolphin rescues are not nearly this easy.

The life of a bottlenose dolphin calf was threatened by entangling fishing line. It was captured, freed of the line, and released 17 minutes later.
The calf had been observed on and off for more than 3 months with the line wrapped through its mouth and around its body. It was near St. Petersburg, FL Line tangling dolphin calf

Fishing line surrounded the calf’s body; a large wad of tangled line tethered to the calf's left side. Drawing by Ann Weaver.
(about a 90 minute drive north of the SDRP lab).
When the line didn’t come free on its own, it threatened the health of the calf, so NOAA officials requested that Randy lead a rescue effort in early November.
The subsequent rescue was publicized in widely – Randy even heard about it from a friend in Mozambique.

Dolphin Videos!

Please visit and subscribe to my youtube channel to watch my dolphin training videos.

Jellyfish Lake In Palau Swarms With Complex Historical Wonders

Source: Huffington Post

Who knew the gelatinous bags of goo known as jellyfish could have such a complex history?

The video below shows millions of golden jellyfish thriving in the evolutionary wonderment that is Jellyfish Lake.
The lake is one of many in Palau, an island nation located about 500 miles east of the Philippines.

Pamela S. Turner writes in a National Wildlife Federation (NWF) article that five lakes each contain a jellyfish "varying from its neighbors and their common ancestor in a dramatic example of the origin of species ... If Darwin had stepped ashore in Palau instead of the Galapagos, the icon of evolution might be not Darwin's finches, but Darwin's jellyfishes."

Snatch!

Thieving Octopus steals diver's camera and makes a quick getaway.

More Whale Encounters

Whale Encounter

Great video about an amazing photograph.

The Dolphin Gazette

Source: Dolphin Communication Project

After reading this issue of The Dolphin Gazette, you'll feel up to date on all of our research in The Bahamas - at Dolphin Encounters and off Bimini. You'll feel confident telling your co-workers about the SM2M, and you'll be telling every college student you know to sign up for our May field course. The list goes on, but it's probably better if you go ahead and read it yourself. Then forward it to all of your friends. Click here to download the final issue of 2011!

40 foot jumping humpback whale

A rare 40-million-year-old shark and whale encounter is preserved in stone.

Source: Discovery News

About 40 million years ago, a single shark in Egyptian waters snuck below a whale and attempted to rip it to shreds, but it wasn't entirely successful. The shark-bit and torn apart whale, described in the latest Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, was recently discovered as a stonecutter in Italy prepared to slice into decorative limestone.

The whale, whose last moments were painful ones, turns out to represent a new species, Aegyptocetus tarfa, which lived on land as well as in the sea. Co-author Giovanni Bianucci of the University of Pisa's Department of Earth Sciences, told Discovery News it's probable that the shark attacked the whale as it was "diving, considering that the bite was on the abdomen"

Grey seal personalities affect pups

Source: BBC

Grey seals have different types of personality that affect the extent to which they guard and care for their young, according to new research.

Researchers from the universities of St Andrews and Durham found seal mothers were often unpredictable and adopted a wide variation of mothering styles.
Some were attentive to their pups while others were not, the experts found.

The study shows, for the first time, the extent of personality differences in marine mammals in the wild.

Animals: Rehabbed Loggerhead Turtle Released

Whales in the desert: Fossil bonanza poses mystery

(11-19) 21:01 PST SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) --

More than 2 million years ago, scores of whales congregating off the Pacific Coast of South America mysteriously met their end.

Maybe they became disoriented and beached themselves. Maybe they were trapped in a lagoon by a landslide or a storm. Maybe they died there over a period of a few millennia. But somehow, they ended up right next to one another, many just meters (yards) apart, entombed as the shallow sea floor was driven upward by geological forces and transformed into the driest place on the planet.
Today, they have emerged again atop a desert hill more than a kilometer (half a mile) from the surf, where researchers have begun to unearth one of the world's best-preserved graveyards of prehistoric whales.
Chilean scientists together with researchers from the Smithsonian Institution are studying how these whales, many of the them the size of buses, wound up in the same corner of the Atacama Desert.

"That's the top question," said Mario Suarez, director of the Paleontological Museum in the nearby town of Caldera, about 700 kilometers (440 miles) north of Santiago, the Chilean capital.

Hydroplaning Dolphins - Planet Earth - BBC

Ocean Mysteries with Jeff Corwin

Source: Monterey Bay Aquarium


Otterly Delightful! from Litton Weekend on Vimeo.
This week’s episode of “Ocean Mysteries with Jeff Corwin” was filmed at the Aquarium! In it, Jeff goes behind the scenes to learn about our sea otter conservation work. Episode #112 - Go West - Otters Airdate: 11/19/2011
More Info Here

Sharks And Seals: Amazing Underwater Images From National Geographic's New Book "Ocean Soul"

Click Here to read the article and view the amazing slide show.

 

Southern right whale. New Zealand, 2007

Swimming with Great Whites

Reporter Jupp Baron Kerckerinck swims with great white sharks near Isla Guadalupe in the open waters of the Pacific.



Source: CNN

Researchers are getting to know a population of Spotted Eagle Rays in Florida in efforts to protect them.

Cetacean Circus

From the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Visitors to the Monterey Bay Aquarium often ask, "Where are the whales in the aquarium?" We let them know how lucky we are to be right here on Monterey Bay, a hotspot for over 13 species of cetaceans -- whales and dolphins. At certain times of year they put on quite the show outside our windows.

This month is no exception. After entertaining the residents of Santa Cruz for a couple of weeks, humpback whales are now feeding off the beaches of Monterey and neighboring Seaside, Sand City and Marina. This weekend, without need for boat or binoculars, you could clearly witness the spectacle of feeding humpbacks as their huge mouths appeared without warning to engulf mouthfuls of schooling (and no doubt very surprised) fish!

It's a great way to end the humpback season and await the arrival of the gray whales on their southern migration later this month.
Meanwhile, in Hawaii humpback whales there have teamed up with some of their smaller cousins -- and who really knows what's going on. But it seems like the dolphins were having some fun: practicing some balancing skills, sliding down the whale rostrum. A regular jungle gym for dolphins, as fortuitously captured by photographer Lori Mazzuca!

Surely some of the smartest critters on the planet at work here and a pure delight for the humans who got to witness it!

Rare gray whale's route surprises scientist

This photo of

CAPTION

By Craig Hayslip, Oregon State University

A western pacific gray whale busily swimming south into California waters has thrown scientists for a loop. The critically-endangered species, with only about 130 known individuals left, was thought to winter near the South China Sea. Instead, the first tagged individual took off from Russia, swam across the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska to the coast of Oregon, and began working his way south.Dubbed "Flex," the male whale was lounging in Russia's Sea of Okhotsk near the Sakhalin Islands in October, where the whales have their summer feeding grounds. Scientists don't know where they breed but they thought they knew where they wintered.

Kayaker enjoys amazingly close encounter with humpback whales

A dauntingly close encounter this week involving a kayaker and two humpback whales in California's Monterey Bay is sure to fall under a believe-it-or-not type of scrutiny. But the encounter was captured by a reputable photographer and authenticated by several sources.

Paul Schraub, a freelance photographer hired as part of a marketing campaign by the Santa Cruz County Conference and Visitors Council, was shooting Tuesday from aboard a small boat when the humpbacks emerged vertically, surface lunge-feeding on small bait fish, directly next to the kayaker (see video report below).

Surfing Dolphins

Source: BBC

Sad News: Death of a Great White Shark

Source: Monterey Bay Aquarium 

We’re saddened to announce that the young great white shark we released on October 25 off the coast of southern California has died. This is a very difficult day for all of us at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and for everyone who saw and cared about this animal.

Based on the shark’s behavior and overall condition prior to release, our white shark team had every confidence that he would do well back in the wild — as was the case with five other young great whites released from the aquarium.

Unfortunately, according to data from the tracking tag he carried, the shark died shortly after he was released.

Surfer has a close-call with lunging Humpback Whale

A woman on a surfboard and two people aboard a kayak were nearly engulfed by a humpback whale that charged out of the water, its mouth agape, just a few feet away. Barb Roettger's video of the amazing encounter, which occurred near Santa Cruz, Calif., was posted Wednesday. The incident is one of several recent close calls in the area, where a small pod of humpback whales has been surface lunge-feeding on anchovies unusually close to shore. They've become a major draw for kayakers and boaters and at least one kayaker has been capsized, and a sailboat was struck by a whale. This circus atmosphere has led to an enforcement presence in an attempt to keep people at a safe distance from the potentially dangerous leviathans.





Source: Grind TV

My Life as a Trainer

The first thing I want you to know about me is that I LOVE being a trainer! I love marine mammals, and I have a special passion to help educate people about them. When the public connects to the animals I help to train, this raises consciousness about the health of the world’s oceans, and this helps all marine life.

Training is all about communication, being clear and precise. Good training is also motivation and fun! Highly intelligent animals are very motivated to be mentally and physically challenged, and it a very important part of designing a healthy life style for them.

What I love most is the “aha” moment. This is that moment when an animal gets what you want him or her to do through successive approximations: training steps that lead to the goal behavior. When the animal does it for the first time, it is so incredibly rewarding to share that moment of understanding between the two of you. That “aha” moment, priceless! Of course this process can take minutes or even months, depending on the animal and what you are training him or her to do.

Dolphins, in particular, are very motivated to learn new things. It’s great for their mental as well as physical stimulation.

Dolphin Photo Identification Explained

from Sarasota Dolphin Research Program by Blair Irvine

Individual bottlenose dolphins can be identified by their dorsal fins. But how exactly is that done? And why bother?

A new report published by NOAA, with SDRP staff members Brian Balmer and Randy Wells as co-authors, explores the use of photo identification as a tool for making abundance estimates of inshore populations of bottlenose dolphins.
Abundance estimates are critical for dolphin stock assessments along the Atlantic Coast and the Northern Gulf of Mexico, because they inform management policy decisions.
You can’t manage the conservation a dolphin population unless you know how many dolphins there are. Right?

Brookfield Zoo dolphin about to give birth

More at ABCLocal

SDRP Veternarian is Finalist for Fellowship

from Sarasota Dolphin Research Program by Blair Irvine

Deborah Fauquier, DVM, has been named as a finalist for a prestigious Marine Policy Fellowship offered by the National Sea Grant College Program.

Deb, is already a marine mammal veternarian, and she led the vet team during the 2010 dolphin health assessments in Sarasota Bay. Read more about her life as a marine mammal vet below.

Currently completing her PhD in Ocean Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Deb’s dissertation research investigated the effects of brevetoxin on sea birds in Sarasota Bay, Florida.

Saving the Franciscana Dolphin

from Sarasota Dolphin Research Program by Blair Irvine

 

Changing fishing techniques, or using gillnets that reflect dolphin sonar may be the best bets to saving the endangered Franciscana dolphin in coastal Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

The greatest threat to the Franciscana dolphin is accidentally getting entangled and drowned in fishing nets.

Research has shown that long-lining for fish is actually more profitable than using traditional gillnets in Argentina, but more work is needed in other areas.
Another solution involves use of a new type of gillnet that is more likely to reflect dolphin sonar. This net may help reduce the mortality, by warning the dolphins of the net’s presence (assuming the dolphins are using their sonar at the right time).
But funding is scarce, and efforts to change the traditional ways of fishing are time and labor intensive. Change is not easy.

Sighting in Penzance was a dwarf sperm whale

13 October 2011 Last updated at 06:48 ET

A marine research charity has confirmed a small whale spotted near Penzance was a dwarf sperm whale. The animal, little more than the size of a porpoise, swam into Mounts Bay, in west Cornwall, on Sunday. Dr Peter Evans, Director of Sea Watch, said the species had never previously been recorded off the UK coast.

The confirmation means that 29 species of cetaceans have now been recorded in UK and Irish waters. Scientists know little about the whale. The whale was spotted on the beach and the sighting then reported to the coastguard and the Cornwall Wildlife Trust strandings officer, Jan Loveridge. A member of the public then managed to re-float the animal, which subsequently swam away. Dr Peter Evans said: "Pictures of the Penzance whale show it to be dwarf sperm whale, its fin being large and almost triangular.
"This species has been recorded on only a handful of occasions in Europe, including Spain and France, and never in Britain or Ireland. "It is just one of the increasing number of records of warm water species to be turning up around the British Isles in recent years."

So little is known about the dwarf sperm whale, that it is listed as 'data deficient' on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Source: BBC
More about dwarf sperm whales

Brazil Tagging Trip A Success

from Sarasota Dolphin Research Program by Blair Irvine

 5 endangered Franciscana dolphins were captured, tagged and released, by a tri-national team of veterinarians and conservation scientists in Babitonga Bay, Brazil.

The dolphins are being tracked with satellite-linked transmitters to learn about their activities, dive patterns, and range in Southern Brazil.

This is important new information because Franciscana dolphins are threatened by coastal development, pollution, and gillnets, but little is known about their movements. Learning about their movements will allow conservationists and policy makers make plans for their protection.

SDRP Researchers Assist with Oil Spill-Health Assessment

from Sarasota Dolphin Research Program by Blair Irvine

 

NOAA recently completed a dolphin health assessment project in Barataria Bay, LA, examining and sampling dolphins for possible sub-lethal effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on bottlenose dolphins.

A team of about 50 veterinarians, biologists and wildlife epidemiologists worked together to conduct the comprehensive health evaluations.
SDRP Director Randy Wells is a co-investigator on the project. SDRP staff members Brian Balmer, Jason Allen and Aaron Barleycorn were also part of the team, as were a number of medical and veterinary researchers who collaborate with the SDRP in our Sarasota Bay research.

Great White Shark - on view at the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Pledge to do your part to reduce ocean trash and save marine life.

Sponsored by: The Marine Mammal Center

Since 1975, The Marine Mammal Center, based in Sausalito, CA, has rescued countless patients suffering from human-caused problems and injuries — many trapped in trash that you and I throw away every day.

We can treat their injuries but we can't treat the cause of their problems without your help! Sign below and pledge to Stop Trashing Our Oceans!

Click Here to sign the pledge, it takes 10 seconds to make a huge difference.

http://www.pacificmmc.org/

Red Tides Influence Juvenile Dolphin Behavior

from Sarasota Dolphin Research Program by Blair Irvine

 Social behavior, activity budgets and ranging behavior of juvenile bottlenose dolphins change during red tides.

They spend less time alone, and they associate in larger, less stable groups, that include a greater diversity of companions.

Harmful algae blooms, called red tides in Florida contain neurotoxins which impact prey fish abundance  and potentially dolphin health.
New research by the SDRP’s Dr. Katherine McHugh and other SDRP staff documents the impact of red tide on juvenile dolphin behavior.

Marine mammal conservation studied

PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Preserving a key 4 percent of the world's oceans could protect vital habitat for most of Earth's marine mammals, U.S. and Mexican researchers say.

Researchers from Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico say setting aside just nine critical ocean conservation sites would save crucial habitat for most species.

To identify such sites, the researchers overlaid maps of where each marine mammal species is found to reveal locations with the highest "species richness," the highest number of different species, a Stanford release said Monday.

Marine Mammal Species Fact Sheets

from Sarasota Dolphin Research Program by Blair Irvine

While we love our bottlenose dolphins, we also support education about other marine mammal species.

Interested?

If so, check out the Species Fact Sheets on the website of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, the world’s largest association of marine mammal scientists, students, and interested members of the public.

There’s a ton of interesting facts about each species on the Fact Sheets.
The list of 37 species includes dolphins, porpoises, whales, seals, sea lions, manatees and dugongs.

It's tough being ginger even when you're a seal: Lonely pup shunned by his colony

A RARE ginger-furred seal pup was spotted alone on a Russian island after being shunned by its colony.

The rest of its sleek black family took an instant dislike to the pup's reddish-brown fur and pale blue eyes, leaving it to fend for itself.

Photographer Anatoly Strakhov spotted the seal, which is almost blind, hiding under a pile of logs on Tyuleniy Island. Mr Strakhov, 61, said: "He was hiding and waiting for his mother to come and feed him."

"He had a very strange colour fur and looked different from his two black brothers.
"I was pleased to be able to capture such an unusual animal, but the poor seal is almost blind and so was unlikely to survive in the wild."

Mr Strakhov was with staff from a dolphinarium who took the seal pup into their care.

Read more at the Daily Mail

Dolphins beat Italian swimming champ in race-off

TORVAIANICA, Italy (AP) -- Italian 
 swimmer Filippo Magnini once ruled the pool in the 100 meter freestyle, but on Thursday he met his match dolphin-style.

The captain of the national swimming team raced a pair of dolphins - King, 19 years old, and Leah, nine-years old - at a specially arranged event in a swimming pool in Torvaianica, about 30 miles (50km) south of Rome.

Mekong Dolphins in Danger of Extinction

A group of dolphins is on the brink of extinction in part because their calves are not surviving, the World Wildlife Fund reported.

There are 85 Irrawaddy dolphins left in Southeast Asia’s Mekong River, according to the conservation organization.

Open Sea Web Cam

Open Sea Exhibit @ Monterey Bay Aquarium

Click Here to watch the open sea web cam at the Monterey Bay Aquarium from 7 am to 7 pm Pacific time.  The open sea exhibit contains a diverse group of animals found in the Pacific ocean including sharks, sea turtles, sunfish and blue-fin tuna.

DOLPHINS: SECOND-SMARTEST ANIMALS?

When human measures for intelligence are applied to other species, dolphins come in just behind humans in brainpower, according to new research. Dolphins demonstrate skills and awareness previously thought to be present only in humans.

New MRI scans show that dolphin brains are four to five times larger for their body size when compared to another animal of similar size, according to Lori Marino, a senior lecturer in neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University, and one of the world's leading dolphin experts. Humans also possess an impressive brain-to-body ratio.