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