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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanArchive for the ‘Dolphins + Whales’Oct 3, 10 Comments Off
Good evening my weekend friends, did those two days go by fast or what? Geez I need a redo! I had a great morning with the dogs, we did a three hour hike along the North coast. We parked at the Bat Caves at Koral Tabak and walked from there to the entrance of Saint Joris bay where the ocean meets the land. I looked for beach treasures while the girls chased crabs and lizards and of course they never catch anything! We then walked along the coast with the ocean on the right towards Canoa and then finally back to the car, we covered a lot of miles. We had to walk across this area of sharp limestone rock and Inca just didn’t like it, Indi was fine but Inca said no way! So like the good dog owner I am I picked her up and carried her a long ways across this field of rock and she pretty much struggled the whole way scratching up my chest with her nails. Did someone just say “spoiled dog”?, yeah well what can I say! Once home I took off in the rain with my umbrella to the glass beach because waves were coming in from a different angle creating perfect conditions for uncovering new beach glass. Many beach glass collectors know that red is the “Holy Grail” of all colors to find, well here we find that color every time we go there and today I found some big ones. I collected for about an hour then went and picked Aimee up and we returned for another hour of beach glass collecting, it’s just so much fun! We found every color under the rainbow today, red, orange, yellows, greens, blues, pinks, aqua’s, brown and white to name a few and as I have said before this area was once a dump 100 years ago. Our find of the day other than the red chunks were two different crimson red beads, they are incredible! For anyone reading this and wanting to collect the best beach glass on planet Earth you can contact us for guided trips, we usually get folks from the cruise ships and we charge by the day.
Here’s a dolphin photo for my poor dolphin fans that think I have failed them! Please feel free to just ask if there is something you want to see, I will try my best. Here’s a tough question, which dolphin is Pasku??
Off to bed, thanks for writing, Barry
Oct 1, 10 Comments Off
Hi friends, check it out, dolphins and our mini-sub interacting together, honestly these dolphins and the trainers are unbelievable! We had such a fun day of filming with the Discovery Channel folks starting out with this first ever sub/dolphin dive out in the open ocean. Ok the downside to the whole morning was that there was zero sun and the water visibility was terrible and you could hardly see anything but other than that it was great! I started out by holding onto the sub and hitching a ride all the way up to the Dolphin Academy area, that’s about a 7-8 minute ride. Once there I let go and then we all waited for the arrival of Zenzi (dolphin trainer) and our two Superstars, Tela and Pasku. The dolphins showed up right on time and immediately started doing laps around the sub with baby Pasku tucked in close to mommy but after a few minutes of seeing that all was good, he proceeded to do his own thing. The discovery guys were filming away with 3-4 cameras as Zenzi got Tela and Pasku to stop for a brief moment outside the main front window of the sub, it was great! I was asked in the beginning to keep my distance as they didn’t want to see my flashes firing on film so I would wait for a dolphin to pass in front of me as you see here and then shoot, that kind of blocked the flash a bit. Zenzi and the dolphins did great, it has only been about a week since the dolphins first met the sub and they are already getting used to it so that means lots of other cool photos are on the way. The rest of the day was spent helping with the filming. In just an hour they are making a night dive with the sub and Aimee and I will be on the boat that will be hundreds of feet above them, should be a fun night.
See you tomorrow, Barry
Aug 25, 10 Comments Off
Good morning all, after work yesterday I raced home and met a friend for a fast and fun mountain bike ride and then worked on my three weeks of underwater blog photos that I will post for you on my web site when I leave. I am still trying to train a new person at work, progress is slow due to camera problems and bad ocean conditions. I am really worried about leaving for vacation right now as I am the only one really trained to take the sub photos, it’s one of those “it’s not as easy as it looks” kind of things.
Here’s another DSE Dolphin Scuba Encounter photo by request this morning. We always hear guests asking, “do dolphins like to be pet”?? The answer is yes! And listen guys if they didn’t like it they would leave! You can’t make a dolphin do anything they don’t want to do. Like the trainers always tell me, the good behavior is rewarded and the bad is just ignored. I highly recommend any and all of you to come do this Dolphin Scuba Encounter, it’s one of the most fun things I have ever done, you can check it out at www.dolphin-academy.com
I am running a little late already, it’s coral spawning week but don’t know if I will have time to go or not? It rained most of the night which is great as things were starting to really look dry around here. See you tonight, Barry
Aug 13, 10 Comments Off
Good morning everyone, Aimee here. This is a great photo of our Michelle (at the front) doing a program called the DSE (dolphin scuba encounter) with some of our Dolphin Academy team, MC and Papito (yes, we have an employee and a dolphin named Papito). The dolphin is Romeo. In 2007 when I was put in charge of training the 5 new dolphins I was told to train a new program; one that was not a swim, encounter, snorkel or therapy. Tough one. So, we decided to do an underwater encounter on scuba with the dolphins. This would give anyone the opportunity to see the dolphins up close, face to face, get to hear them and their many sounds and learn about the animals in their own world. It took many months to get them used to all the equipment and to be relaxed with all the divers and hands and fins. One of the funniest and toughest things was to teach them to not float up, but to relax and stay close to us, right off of the bottom. Romeo seems to be doing an awesome job! Before we put divers in the water we give them a 20 minute briefing talking about dolphin anatomy; most people don’t think about a dolphin belly button or ears or follicles where they used to have hair! We teach them about sounds and echolocation. Once they are underwater they get to see and feel all these wonderful things right at their fingertips. They also get to participate in an echolocation demonstration. The trainers swims off a bit, sends the dolphin back to one of the guests with a triangle and then the dolphin returns to the trainer. We then put eyecups on the dolphin and ask them to retrieve the triangle from the guest. Everyone gets to not only see the dolphin locate the triangle but gets to hear the echolocation clicks as they are finding it. For me, it is always the highlight of the dive, so cool! Well, we have been doing this program for about 2 years now, but it is a new program for us over at Dolphin Academy. It is just great letting our new colleagues experience such a fun new thing. Barry called so excited yesterday after this dive telling me how great it was and how wonderful Michelle and Romeo were! He just could not stop buzzing about it! That is just awesome. Michelle had never even touched a dolphin before she started working here. You would never know it now! She seems like an old pro who is just a natural with the animals. I am very lucky to have found her. Well, now all you locals who know about this have to come and join us, and you divers from other places, this is just one more “carrot” to get you down here. Come visit!
Busy but fun day ahead, Aimee
Aug 12, 10 Comments Off
Good morning all, we are both waking up after a fairly restless night, it’s so hot here that we have to keep turning the air-co on and off throughout the night, it’s either too hot or too cold! Both of us are felling better and I did do a dive at work yesterday while Aimee had the day off. My day started with going to get my island ID card again and this time it was successful, I only had to stand in line for 2 hours! The rain seems to have stopped, we haven’t had moisture in a week now and I can already see the wild flowers are dying.
Here’s another dolphin photo for my dolphin fans out there and again this is Tela and Pasku! When Pasku is inside the dolphin lagoons with the others he is everywhere and doing everything on his own but out in the open ocean he usually sticks close to momma for security. I have found over the years that photographing dolphins in their natural environment can be very difficult because they move so fast and turn on a dime. Now I am starting to listen for them, when I hear them coming I at least know from what direction and have a better chance of catching them as they speed by.
It’s off to work, see you again tonight, Barry
Aug 11, 10 Comments Off
Hi friends, just checking in like a good boy! Our two South Dakota friends left this morning and I am still waiting to hear how the day went, we sure did enjoy them!! Here’s a fun photo from today’s 10:30 dolphin show. I thought for once I would try something new and walked out on the big boulders along side the ocean and shot in towards the crowd. This is Tela and little Pasku flying high for the crowds and let me tell you they love it! Pasku is just so cute as he tries to duplicate everything his mom is doing and for the most part he is succeeding, he just can’t jump as high yet! I figured if I didn’t get a dolphin photo out soon I would start getting hate mail.
Aimee and I both felt a little better today but not well enough to go for my Tuesday evening bike ride.
I did do a fun dive with the dolphins out in the open ocean this morning in fact it was also with Tela and Pasku, geez, talk about two dolphins that are worth their weight in gold! The dive was great although the visibility wasn’t so hot, I did get a few nice shots and will send them your way sometime in the next few days.
Sorry so short again, there just isn’t enough time to do everything! Bye, Barry
Jul 18, 10 Comments Off
Ihay eoplepay Hat’sway upway? That’s Pig Latin for, Hi people! What’s up?? You may think ”Pig Latin” was just something your grandparents made up, but take a closer look. This pseudo-language is widely known and used by English-speaking people, especially when they want to disguise something they are saying from non-Pig Latin speakers. It was first created in WWII when soldiers wanted to communicate to each other without eavesdropping Germans or Japanese understanding them. Just another tid-bit of pretty much useless but fun information for you all this fine Sunday evening!
Last night we had thunder and lightning and non-stop rain and this morning the island was soaked! I took the dogs for a long “mud walk” this morning but they could have cared less and I think enjoyed it even more than normal!
Very little to report today, I hung around the house just relaxing from my last five days with the sub. I did go for an hour bike ride in the evening but for some reason just wasn’t into it!
This is our semi-new dolphin trainer Roxanne doing a fun Rocket Ride during one of our daily shows. The trainers are getting more and more creative with these lately. A few do the dive like Aimee, some do a back flip and others do the splits or as you see here kind of a fun cheerleading action with a wave, no matter what they do the crowd loves it!
Off to bed, more tomorrow, Barry
Jul 7, 10 Comments Off
Good evening friends, just a quick note to say hi and to tell you some great news, we found a home for the last puppy!!! Our next door neighbor Sylvia stopped by yesterday and asked if we still had the puppies. She said she was interested in finding another dog as they will soon be moving to the Western part of the island near Soto and will have a bigger yard. So our little man found a great home, his new parents are really great people and he will be treated like a little king, cool huh!! Well speaking of the puppies, Aimee and Sylvia took all the dogs this morning to Saint Joris for the first time ever and they had an absolute blast! In fact they slept all day from complete exhaustion!
Aimee and I are headed to the movies tonight so I need to speed things up. I found this shot yesterday hidden in a pile of photos that eventually need to be checked out one by one. The photo pretty much speaks for itself, this is a female Bottlenose dolphin with her new born calf, one of the many great things we have seen over the years here in Curacao at the Dolphin Academy and the custom built Sea Aquarium. By far one of the coolest things I have seen here on this trip has been the birth of a baby dolphin and then getting to watch it grow up day after day, it’s truly a beautiful thing!
I have to go, see you tomorrow, Barry
Jul 1, 10 Comments Off
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Kayena!! This young little thing is becoming more and more like her father Copan everyday who as many of you know is the King of jumping! Most dolphins can reach a height of 15-30 feet in the air and once there soar for quite a ways! This is a behavior that has been taught but dolphins do jump in the wild as well for different reasons. When traveling, they use less energy by jumping than swimming, because water is more dense than air. Dolphins can move a long distance with one long jump, especially with their streamlined bodies. Dolphins also jump to find food, similar to how birds look for fish above the water. In addition, they will jump to scare a school of fish, which then pack tighter into a group, and the dolphin can catch several at once. Dolphins communicate with other dolphins by jumping and become particularly acrobatic during mating season. Male dolphins often do complicated spins and flips, perhaps to attract females, or to show dominance that keeps other males away. Biologists also theorize this behavior might be playfulness in the courtship ritual.
Today was a mad rush to clean the house up before Aimee arrives later tonight. I did take the dogs to the beach for an hour and while they played I cleaned up trash and carried it back to the car. I was again met with opposition in my cleaning effort this morning as a family walked by and just laughed shaking their heads. I said do you like looking at all this trash? They said back to me “it doesn’t bother us and there’s nothing you can do about it anyways”, so just leave it! So, there’s the problem with Curacao, no one cares anymore! I didn’t let it bother me because I know it’s right and that it does help so there you mean people! On the way back from Saint Joris this morning in the middle of a busy road I spotted a baby turtle trying to cross the road! Yes, a baby turtle, I almost crashed the car trying to stop without running him over and hitting the car in front of me! I stopped right in major traffic, everyone was honking at me to move my car and get out the way, the dogs were barking and going crazy but I opened my door and raced out and grabbed him, I surely wasn’t going to let him get run over! He is so cute, some kind of a land turtle and he’s only about three inches long. I immediately called Zenzi who also has turtles and she came to my turtle rescue! She took him to her house to live with her other two and I talked to her just a few minutes ago and he’s eating and doing great, photos soon! The rest of the day was spent shopping, sweeping, mopping, and I even pre-cooked dinner for my tired and hungry traveler so she will have a nice hot meal to come home to tonight! At 4:00 I met a friend and we did a fast and furious hour and a half ride and man was it ever hot! That’s about it. I better get going to the airport! Thanks for all the notes, I am now receiving about 30 Word Press comments a day from new people fining our site, so welcome everyone!! Gotta go, more tomorrow, Barry
Jun 29, 10 Comments Off
Hi readers how was your day?? As you can see mine started off with an open ocean dolphin dive with George our fearless leader and Annie. The dive was short but sweet and Annie stayed with us the whole time which is kind of unusual. Normally the dolphins spend a lot of their time doing what dolphins do and somewhere in the middle they will find us and “entertain the humans” for awhile then take off to play again. George knows Annie so well, they are quite a team and Annie seems to trust him more than any other person allowing him to do just about anything he wants. After the dive I took off back home as today was my day off and after rinsing everything left to do a little grocery shopping and drop off the laundry. I then spent a good part of the day cleaning up the house a bit as Aimee returns Thursday evening. At 4:00 I drove to Saint Joris with my bike and met a few friends for a bike ride but the ride ended soon after starting as everyone had flats and no spare tubes, when will we learn??
I wish I had more, my head is blank tonight, see you tomorrow, Barry
Jun 16, 10 Comments Off
Hi Friends, I am super busy tonight getting my underwater camera ready for a big trip to the East Coast by boat at 9:00am tomorrow morning. This morning my friend Neil’s who runs and operates a company called Dive Charter Curacao www.divechartercuracao.com called and asked if I would like to join on a fun trip to the East coast tomorrow morning and of course I said yes, so check back tomorrow night to see how this adventure turns out.
Here’s one for Aimee that we took just a few days before she left on her long vacation to New Mexico. This is Aimee holding our year and a half old baby Pasku who was born on Christmas morning 2009! We call him our little Christmas miracle!! Behind Aimee is his mother Tela who is there for backup and to make sure things don’t get out of control. The whole time Aimee is holding him he is talking to his momma thru a series of squeaks and squeals maybe saying “it’s alright mom she’s just holding me! Bottlenose dolphins identify themselves with a signature whistle meaning each and every dolphin has his or her own one of a kind noise which many scientists believe is kind of like saying their name in whistle language. As you may or may not know, sound waves travel through water at a speed of about 1.5 km/sec (0.9 mi/sec), which is 4.5 times faster than sound traveling through air. These sound waves bounce off objects in the water and return to the dolphin in the form of an echo. By this complex system of echolocation, dolphins can determine size, shape, speed, distance, direction, and even some of the internal structure of objects in the water. George, the leader of our people, was doing some sound experiments at the Sea Aquarium with all the different noises dolphins make underwater. I remember Aimee was helping do some of the recording, I will have to check with George and find out what progress has been made and let you know.
I better get going, still have lots to do for tomorrows adventure. Sunny, hot, humid, rainy regards, Barry
Jun 16, 10 Comments Off
Hello one and all, how is everyone this fine evening?? I first want to apologize as there is a problem with my website and I am unable to post any new blogs. If anyone out there is a Word Press Pro please drop me a line and maybe you can help me with this problem. The builder and creator of my site is such a busy man it’s hard to get a hold of him so I am usually left to figure it out on my own but this new problem is weird? Aimee is buying me a Word Press book while in the States and I think that is going to help me a whole lot.
The puppies are still doing well at YUKA’S Puppy Hotel and that means I have more time to get stuff done around here. I took the hound dogs to Saint Joris this morning along with some trash bags and spent the morning cleaning a beach and building a bridge with pallets to cross over a very muddy spot on the trail. A bunch of our locals dumped a bunch of pallets and trash AGAIN right at the beach so this morning I pulled one pallet at a time to a section of trail near the waters edge that is always in mud and you always have to walk thru it, so today I started building a pallet bridge over that mess. A few older Dutch ladies walked by with dogs while I was cleaning the beach and they just looked at me like I had lost my mind. They said to me, why bother, it’s just going to get trashed again! I guess it’s this kind of thinking that keeps Saint Joris locked in trash, if everyone who went there took out a bag full it would get cleaned.
I have guests arriving tomorrow afternoon from Bonaire so I spent the day getting their room ready and cleaning up the house a bit and after went shopping. At 4:00 I took off on a super fast one hour bike ride, I did 2 full laps of Sundays race course which I did not do because of how much I hate riding in mud and it rained an hour before the race.
That’s about it, Aimee is great and having a blast it will be hard to get her to come home! Bye now, Barry
Jun 4, 10 Comments Off
Good evening friends, I want you all to meet our friend Loet. Loet and her friend Laura arrived months ago as interns at the Dolphin Academy and I think it’s safe to say that from day one we all fell in love with them both. These girls have worked so hard for the Sea Aquarium, they are both aspiring photographers and I am sure we will see great things from them both in the near future. Both girls are from the Netherlands, Loet is from an area called Noord Brabant and Laura is from Limburg and Aimee and I are hoping to get to go see them and other friends one of these days in Holland. Well today was there last day at work, their photography internship is over and in just a few days they head back to their mother country, we sure are going to miss them. Today at 1:30 the girls raced outside to do a private swim with three dolphins! This is our little Annie sticking her tongue out for Loet. Many of you already know that Annie is one of our dolphins that goes out to the open ocean to dive with divers on a weekly basis, she is so great! Laura and Loet had a wonderful last swim, an experience they will cherish for a lifetime! Many thanks again ladies for all the help, hard work, enthusiasm and wonderful attitudes, keep up the great work!
After work today I loaded my bike on the car and took the dogs to Saint Joris to finally ride the new trail as it is officially open and ready for action. I think tomorrow morning there will be a big bike group heading there to give it a try, I am excited to hear what they think??
It’s late, see you all again tomorrow, Barry
May 26, 10 Comments Off
Good morning friends, it seems it’s getting harder and harder to get these out at night lately as I am so busy with other things. Last night we had our two Dolphin Academy interns over Loet and Laura with their boyfriends for dinner and before I knew it time had ran out to play on the computer.
The puppies are growing so fast, I told Aimee to just stop feeding them for a while so they stay small, she didn’t think that was very funny. Today they finally get their second shot and Saturday our little black female goes to her new home and the brown one moves into her new house in mid June, so now it’s two down one to go, just our little male is left.
Here is our fearless leader George again out on the reef with Tela and Pasku, our two celebrities! I shot this the other morning when I ran out of air, if fact this was the last photo I took! George has been training dolphins to follow him into the open ocean for years all around the World and is one of the few people on the planet that has ever accomplished this feat successfully! I love watching our guests faces when they see and realize that we just let out two dolphins into the open ocean for a morning snorkel or dive, they just can’t believe it’s for real and that the dolphins will return on their own. Like I tell everyone who asks, the dolphins love going outside to play and hunt and hang out with a few divers but they know where home is and always follow the boat back in because they are social animals who would never leave their pod or family.
My new trail at Saint Joris is finally open and ready for business! The bad part is not a person in Curacao knows where it is, I hid the entrance and exit from 4-wheelers so I will need to start taking folks out there and giving them the grand tour. It has been raining again and is at this very moment which is great news for a man who just finished building a new trail, that rain will pack it down and make it look like it has been there for a hundred years.
I need to get to work, talk to you tonight, Barry
May 17, 10 Comments Off
Hi friends, how was your Monday or should I ask?? All in all mine was pretty good. We woke this morning to a giant downpour of rain, it was so great!! With these last few small rains we have had it’s keeping the island green and happy and I pray it continues as we hate to see the island dry up!
Here’s yet another fun shot of Tela and Pasku out in the deep blue open ocean with none other than our fearless leader George Kieffer. This was the only good vertical shot I got on the whole dive, they are so much harder to get than the horizontals and so much better for a cover shot somewhere down the road. Tela is the mother of baby Pasku, he has to be one of the first or only baby dolphins born in captivity to ever go out into the open ocean at such a young age, we call him our little “Rock-Star”!! In the near future they are planning on teaching the dolphins to go out as you see here and meet our new mini-sub with guests inside, can you imagine how cool that would be and what a great photo it’s going to make!!?
I wish I had more for you all, the puppies are as cute as cute gets so please help us find a home soon!! It’s off to bed, see you tomorrow, Barry
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