Coral Reef Photos » Marine Mammals

Baby Bottlenose Dolphin, Baby Dolphins, Baby Animals

barry — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:56:09 +0000

Sunny Curacao greetings everyone. Here is a great baby dolphin shot! This little one is Kanoa. You may recall that Playa Kanoa is a local beach and that is what we named him after. He just turned one year old on December 8th, and isn’t he a super cutie! I think he is one of the cutest babies we have ever had, with his great big eyes and little face and he just loves playing with the trainers and bugging his best friend Roxette. His favorite game is for Roxy to have fish in her mouth and he swims after her trying to get at it. He recently began eating fish himself and now thinks that all fish just must be intended for him. Of course after he is done chasing Roxy he also loves jumping over her, in general just jumping all over the lagoon, like a little horse running all over the field. She is a great Auntie and is very patient and you can often find the two of them hamming it up all over the place. He often has the trainers laughing so hard they almost fall off the platform. His mother is Renata and father is Copan, so he is sure to have both good looks and brains. Can’t wait to see this little fellow in a year or two!

On another note, Aimee picked up a little dog over by the big Chapman boat today and took her in for a vet check and vaccinations. She is super sweet and we have both fallen in love with her from the moment we saw her. She is about 20 weeks old, a female and black and brown. Aimee has named her Lola. Yesterday she got things going by bringing food and water bowls to her area by the big ship. The worker guys have been taking pretty good care of her, feeding her and even giving her stuff for worms and ticks and fleas. For a street dog she looks great. But, more surprising is how much she loves people. She will wiggle out of her skin at the very sight of you and then runs over for some loving. Aimee spent 2 hours at the vet clinic, mostly just waiting for her turn, but in the meantime had a great time walking her around and doing some socializing by just letting her see and hear everything. What a wonderful little one. We are going to get her vaccinations completed, and get her sterilized and go from there. So, you may hear about Lola in the future.

I trust all is well with my groupies out there, sure do miss all you guys!!

Later, Barry

Sea-Glass Dolphin, Happy New Year, Beach Glass

barry — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:25:31 +0000

Happy New Year!!!!!!!!! Ok, I’m a day late but what’s new? I hope everyone out there had a great weekend and a safe but fun evening. On Saturday, New Years Eve day I did four dives with the sub! Yep, we had a family of 16 that all went in the sub, they were from a cruise-ship so we really had to hurry and get them back to the docks before 4:00. By 5:00 I was wiped out and not feeling well and ended up staying home with the dogs New Years Eve while, Aimee took the gang on a fantastic boat ride with Dutch and his family to ring in the new year! As hard as I tried to sleep thru the noise it was just impossible and in the end just tried to keep the dogs from barking and going crazy. I think the whole gang came back home from their boat-trip at around 1:30 in the morning and again we all tried to sleep but it was non-stop fireworks all around us till 5:00 am!! I ended up getting 20 minutes sleep the whole night and just gave up and took the dogs out for a long walk early Sunday morning joined by Stijn. We had a great New Years Day walk along the North coast and collected driftwood and other fun stuff while the dogs ran and ran and ran! At 10:00 I took the whole gang to Caracas Bay for a “New Years Dive” at tugboat and finally little Hannah did a 32 minute dive!!! This was officially her first real dive in the ocean and we were all glad to be part of it! I think today they are headed to Puerto Mari for another dive and to just spend the whole day relaxing on the beach.

That’s about it, we have all been very busy trying to get in as much fun time as we can with our guests before they leave.

Once again, Happy New year!! Talk more tomorrow, Barry

Baby Dolphin, Baby Bottlenose Dolphin, Dolphin Calf

barry — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:51:39 +0000

Good morning Aimee here, this is the last day of the year, so let’s all make the best of today. Meet momma Renata and baby Kanoa. Kanoa just turned one year old in December. I know I have said this before, but I will say it again, he is one of the most beautiful babies ever! Just take a look at his huge baby eyes, and he has a pretty unique yellowish color on his sides as well. I had to laugh yesterday when Barry came over to this lagoon with me. We had our friends Tammi and Hannah in the water with Renata, Roxette and Kanoa, and suddenly he just went crazy, racing and jumping everywhere. He had us all laughing until our sides ached. At one point he jumped so high and out of control he almost did an entire flip. Wow. Too much fun.

Barry is sick again with another cold but somehow managed to do three dives with the sub yesterday?? Today they have a family of 16 arriving from the States and they are all going for a ride in the sub, it will be crazy over there!!

Our guests kept very busy yesterday, they first swam with the dolphins and then Scott went for a sub ride down to 500 plus feet! Then at 6:00 Scott and Tammi went on a night dive in front of the Sea Aquarium while Hannah and I took the dogs for a long walk thru the Curacao rain-forest! Barry came home wiped-out, ate dinner standing up and went straight to bed, not sure how he will make it today?

Well, thanks for another wonderful year and all the support and help! Hope you all have a fun but safe evening, it will be one crazy night here that’s for sure!! Happy New Year from Curacao!!

Aimee, Barry, Indi, Inca, Nila (the cat)

Jumping Dolpins, Bottlenose Dolphins, Baby Dolphin

barry — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:22:34 +0000

Good morning from sickville! Yep I finally am sick with a stupid cold! But the bright side if there is one, it’s been almost a year since I was last sick, so I have done pretty good until now. I was unable to go the Sea Aquarium Christmas party last night because of the non-stop nose blowing and coughing, really didn’t want to make everyone there sick. Aimee at least went and she looked great in her full length dress, I think this is the second Christmas party I have missed due to sickness.

Yesterday was a really bad day for the local wildlife and beautiful vegetation that we HAD around our house and neighborhood. A group of so-called experts came in with machetes and leveled our beautiful back yard and wiped out two thirty foot trees saying “they needed to be pruned”! Ignorance runs wild here and with zero training I guess they just don’t know or care? We had one of the best flowering yards in the whole area! Most of you are smart enough to know the difference in pruning and cutting a whole adult tree down to it’s stump right?? Aimee went over in tears to the land-lord across the street but she’s as dumb as the rest of them telling Aimee “they are professionals with certificates, I will send you a photo, you just have to see it! So now we will have no shade on the house, no where for all my birds to nest or hide during the rain and no protection from the kids throwing rocks at our windows! Real smart folks! If those trees survive, which I doubt they will it will take years for them to grow back and unfortunately this is the kind of stuff we deal with here on a daily basis! As you can tell we are really upset, and they did this up and down the street, it looks awful!

All went well yesterday at the US Embassy, Aimee made appointments for us for next week to get new passports, they said it will only take 10 days, so that’s good news!

Here is Tela and Pasku preparing to jump out of the water and soar high in the sky for all to see! We have three dolphin shows a day here at Dolphin Academy and they are always a big hit with the visitors!

Running late again, sniff, sniff, see you soon, Barry

Web Burrfish, Jumping Dolphins, Bonaire Nights Book

barry — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:00:52 +0000

Good morning friends, I received a note yesterday saying I won 2nd place in the 2012 “Bonaire Nights” photo contest with a photo of a Web Burrfish, here is the link to the photo in case you have forgotten. http://www.coralreefphotos.com/web-burrfish-chilomycterus-antillarum-porcupinefish/ The photo will run for a year in their new publication that can be found all over the island in just about every store, restaurant and hotel. These Web Burrfish are not found here in Curacao, this was the first one I had ever seen all thanks to our friends Sal and Patty who led the dive at Eden Beach. I remember that dive like it was yesterday as it took team-work to get this photo and along with seeing this cool fish Sal went on to find and show us many more cool things, so thanks again guys!!

Yesterday was a fairly busy day at the Substation, we had customers at 11:00 and 1:00 which meant I was underwater to properly greet them! We usually do the photos first thing with clients and that takes me less than five minutes, after I am done I give a signal or a wave and off they go into the darkness. I then get out, rinse everything, take the camera back inside and work on the photos I just took for around 30 minutes. When the sub returns, usually and hour and a half we have all the photos ready and I even make a cool “Certificate of Submersion” for them with their photo on it to take home as well. After work I met Stijn and off we went on a fast 15 mile/one hour ride under overcast skies. I can see it’s going to be harder and harder to get rides in with this crazy weather lately.

Here are some jumping dolphins for all my neglected dolphin lovers out there, I guess the photo just speaks for itself!

Running late, have a super great day!! Barry

Baby Bottlenose Dolphin, Newborn Dolphin, Dolphins

barry — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:30:28 +0000

Good morning everyone. Wow, it sure is rainy season for us down here right now! The trails are growing faster than we can cut them, and I told Barry he needed a jet ski and not a mountain bike if he wanted to go riding!

Well, of course if it’s a baby dolphin, I am usually behind the keyboard, and this is a newborn calf from a year or two ago. They are so perfect, they look plastic. Barry likes to photograph them in the first few days because of the way they throw their head up and out of the water to breath. Dolphins have to learn the “breathing roll”, where mostly only the blowhole comes out of the water and they can take a quick breath and keep moving. Baby dolphins are not that coordinated in their swimming and breathing yet, and use a much more exaggerated movement of coming up and out of the water for each breath. That, of course, gives him a better chance of a nice photo of a beautiful dolphin face. You can barely see the dorsal fin of the mother beside this baby, and that is right where he will stay at all times, unless he is nursing. By staying close by mother, the baby uses very little energy for swimming and just stays in the slip stream and gets pulled right along. They more or less move as one unit. Baby dolphins have to be born very physically advanced. Then need to swim, nurse, and breath. But, they don’t moved far away from mom for at least a month, and neither will sleep during the fist month or two either. Tough stuff, isn’t it?

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. I got to talk to my wonderful family on skype yesterday. When you live this far away you have to love skype! We then went to Thanksgiving dinner over at Augustos. It is a great meal with all the “fixings”, but it is under the palm trees and ocean. Nice combo. Well, it’s Black Friday….now go out and shop!

Aimee

Diving with Dolphins in Curacao, Dolphin Academy

barry — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:02:42 +0000

Good morning friends, here is baby Pasku once again for all my patient dolphin lovers out there. I know I used to send out more dolphin photos but since moving over to the Substation I just don’t seem to get over to Dolphinville as much as I would like. I do get to go on some dolphin dives out in the open ocean once in a while, where I took this photo but other than that I am kind of out of the dolphin-loop as of late. Aimee usually tells me immediately when she gets home each day about what Pasku did out on any given open ocean dive. She has been doing all the underwater video for the past year for Dolphin Academy and the divers from Ocean Encounters so after a dive she hands the camera off to the photo department and then sometimes if it was a great dive she requests a copy for herself. Pasku really is a complete joy to be with, he will just swim over and stop in front of you and let you pet him or like most times he just chases fish and puts on a real live underwater dolphin behavior show for all to see.

I want to apologize to everyone tuning into the underwater Substation camera yesterday, we were so late again getting the sub out! I got home and had at least 20 e-mails from you all saying you were there but saw nothing. One lucky person tuned in late and got to see the whole show which is cool if you get to see it. For some reason we just can’t seem to get that thing out and underwater in a timely fashion so I am going to stop giving you times for now that way no one is just sitting there waiting. I wish I could alert everyone 10 minutes before we go under, like have all your e-mails ready on the computer and click “send” minutes before we go?? Any ideas please let me know.

I am off to the sea, talk more soon, Barry

Gulf War Veterans Diving with Dolphins, Dolphins

barry — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:46:27 +0000

Good morning everyone, Aimee here. I always enjoy writing if it is some of our dolphins for the daily photo! This is one from about a week ago when Barry and I did the dolphin dive with the American veterans. It was a beautiful dive with clear water and our little fellow Pasku and his auntie Annie. I love going on dives, especially with Pasku who is becoming quite the hunter. Right now you can see us over the coral reef, but we move onto a sand-flat area surrounded by gorgonians and large coral heads. There are tons of fish around this area and Pasku is always looking for his next victim. Usually he gets a small fish out of a gorgonian, but on this dive he did one of his funniest things ever. There were two large French angelfish hanging out around a boulder coral and he snuck up behind the coral and was trying to catch one. The angelfish of course ran to the other side of the coral, and then he tried to sneak up on the other one. He kept hiding behind this coral, first on one side, then on the other with the Frenchies trying to dash and hide. I was laughing so hard! He never did catch one, it was mostly just a game of hide-and-seek. Just a bit later, they disappeared from sight and then a grey racing blur came by us. Well, it was our little guy Pasku again, this time hot on the trail of a 10 inch silver Jack fish. Wow, they were flying! He was only inches behind this fish, and they were like two fighter jets, one trying to loose the other, right-left, up and down. What an amazing thing to see! That is one of the reasons the dive is so great. The dolphins are very used to having humans around watching them, but they also display natural behaviors such as hunting. The veterans enjoyed this dive so much, with lots of thumbs up and fists in the air. It is so nice to be a part of giving just a little back to people who have given us all so much. Thanks again!

Have a great day everyone. Aimee

Dolphin Tale Movie, Dolphin Trainers in Curacao

barry — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:16:58 +0000

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Dolphin Academy, ”dolphin training team”! Yes, here we are in all our wetsuit glory at the local movie theater for the premier of the new movie “Dolphin Tale”! This movie is about the true story of Winter, a young bottlenose dolphin that stranded in Florida, and was rescued by the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Winter needs to have her tale amputated due to the extent of her injury and this is the story of the people surrounding her, and her incredible will to survive.

Well, in combination with the Curacao Movies, the Southern Caribbean Cetacean Network (SCCN) and Dolphin Academy, we had a special educational promotion and movie premier in which the trainers came dressed in their “uniform”, our director and veterinarian were available for questions and also shown was the movie from our rescue of Sully the pilot whale, who stranded here in Curacao several years ago and was rescued, rehabilitated and eventually found a new permanent home at Sea World of San Diego. For fun and interesting videos of Sully you can just look up on You-Tube, Sully the pilot whale. There are great videos and even interviews by George and me. After having lived through that experience, many of us trainers and the volunteers could look at this wonderful movie with a different point of view. I definitely recommend taking your friends and family to see this movie, it is a great representation of the time, effort and love that we as trainers put into our animal friends each and every day. One of my colleagues even told me after the movie “wow, I look at this film and think about how lucky these people were to be involved with working with these wonderful animals every day, and this is just what we get to do”! Our job working with dolphins is something we all try to recognize and appreciate each and every day.

So, to answer a question most of you probably have, yes we did get to change before the movie started!

Have a wonderful Day!! Aimee (purple whistle)

Dolphin Training, Dolphin Trainers, Dolphin Behaviors

barry — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 11:44:31 +0000

Good morning everyone, Aimee here. If there’s a photo of a dolphin you have my attention! This is Tela and little Pasku, with Tela sticking out her tongue. I think of all the dolphins I have ever seen, Tela has for sure, hands down, the longest tongue! It is one of the funniest behaviors that she does, always making everyone laugh. Most of the other dolphins do this, but Tela’s is, for sure, the best. We will have to wait and see if Pasku inherits his mother’s gift! I am standing on our submerged platform, we do a great program from here with guests. The guests stand next to us and we lay the dolphin out sideways so they can touch, and we give them a lesson about dolphin anatomy and behavior. It is my favorite program because people get to see the dolphins up close and I get to teach them about how amazing these creature are. I meet people from everywhere, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, (my Spanish is getting much better), Germany, Poland, Russia, all parts of Europe and of course Holland (still need to work on my Dutch). It is especially fun when I get to be with my friend Tela and get some extra hugs and kisses. Some days it is still hard to believe that we call this work.

Well, it’s just a short weekend note for today. Hope you have a great one, stay safe and enjoy it! Aimee