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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanOLDER POST:Mother and Baby Bottlenose Dolphin, Baby DolphinNEWER POST:Goatfish, School of Goatfish, Yellow GoatfishAug 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
OLDER POST:Mother and Baby Bottlenose Dolphin, Baby DolphinNEWER POST:Goatfish, School of Goatfish, Yellow GoatfishSITE MAP
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