Dolphin stranding: Where can we put the dolphins who need to stay with us?

Research shows an alarming trend in the euthanasia of stranded dolphins. With the advent of powerful organizations whose purpose is to limit, or make entirely illegal, the display of cetaceans, the opportunity for a dolphin who strands and who requires long term care-- due to circumstances that make it inhumane to return it to the sea -- has nearly disappeared in Australia.

All too often, rangers working for government agencies appear at cetacean strandings with hypodermic syringes filled and ready. If a dolphin or small whale is thought unlikely to survive if returned to the water quickly, or who might require long-term care if rescued, it is killed on the spot.

How many have died due to having nowhere to be taken for rehabilitation? Figures are nearly impossible to find, due to governmental efforts to keep this data from the public.


The situation today: recent deaths

In known cases, officers have arrived on the scene of a stranding with syringes in hand, immediately killing the dolphin, before any realistic assessment of the condition of the dolphin has been done.

In Coffs Harbour, in 2006, a Risso’s Dolphin was found, stranded in the estuary. Local dolphin experts were in the process of getting the dolphin onto a stretcher to be carried to the Pet Porpoise Pool, one of only two facilities in Australia licensed to rehabilitate dolphins. Before they could get the dolphin onto a stretcher, a female ranger from the National Parks and Wildlife Service arrived, came down to see the dolphin, identified it as a Risso’s Dolphin (an offshore species rarely seen near land), and proceeded to inject it with a lethal dose of chemicals, killing it immediately.

The necropsy carried out the following day showed absolutely no pathology. This stranded dolphin was killed for no reason. It had no identifiable illness, disease, or parasites. Ironically, it was only meters away from one of the only rescue facilities capable of helping that lonely stranded dolphin.

If this Risso’s Dolphin had been given a fair go, it could have been helped to recover, and would have been taken to sea and released. If she had not be able to live in the ocean, she could have been given a lifetime of excellent care, living among humans as a sort of Ambassador for her kind.

The policy of NPWS is that “the best interests of the stranded cetaceans will be taken into consideration at all times”. While this is the established and published policy, in fact, the local district managers give verbal instructions to rangers to euthanise in nearly every case.

The window of opportunity for a dolphin to become an Ambassador has shut in Australia. How many people among the millions who love dolphins, who surf beside them, watch them from headlands and beaches, and who come to see them at either Sea World or the Pet Porpoise Pool, know that dolphins are being killed regularly by their government?

In a maddening case on the NSW coast, near the town of Cabarita, July 17th 2006, a very young Humpback Whale was found stranded in shallow water. Rescuers arrived and were ready to help her back into the surf when officials from NPWS decided to have her moved up onto the beach, above the high water mark, so that “assessments could be done”. Stated at the time, the reason was “to get blood samples and to see if her mother could be spotted nearby”.

However, instead of allowing for the whale’s own natural ability to find her own mother, or to make her way out into the open ocean where other whales might be found to swim with and protect her, the officials chose to keep her stranded on the beach, far above where she had been. As the tide receded, she became well and truly stranded. She lay on her belly, crushing her own lungs and internal organs. She died a horrible, slow, lingering death before the anguished eyes of the rescuers.

The official report stated that this whale had no chance of being able to survive the open sea. In fact, this was an ill-informed opinion, not a verifiable certainty, and her life was ended by lethal injection only after many, many hours of terrible suffering.
(See www.surfersforcetaceans.com/sfc.html “Death of a baby whale” story for the sad details)


Eye of the Cabarita whale, in agony as she died on the beach.
July, 2006

Australia has nearly 60,000 kilometres of coastline. There are many thousands of kilometres of beaches where cetaceans can and do strand. With only two facilities -- within 250 kilometres of each other on the east coast -- licensed to hold dolphins or small whales for rehabilitation, where do the dolphins go who might be rescued, helped to regain their health over time, and either be put back in the ocean, or given a lifetime of care?

The answer is: there is no legal way for a dolphin to be helped, other than to kill it to put it out of its suffering.

The History of an ongoing tragedy

In a country that loves the ocean and the beaches, where it is said that 75% of the population lives within 100 k of the ocean, that enjoys a worldwide reputation as ocean lovers, and especially dolphin and whale lovers, how has this come to be?

The story as the Cetacean Studies Institute has pieced it together is this:
Following the historic Frost Report in 1978, which recommended that all Australian whaling cease immediately, based on a comprehensive study carried out under Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, the general mood in Australia, especially among environmental organizations and animal welfare advocacy groups, was that all uses and potential abuses of cetaceans, including dolphins, must come under careful scrutiny.

Commendably, this was the result of dolphins having played a significant role in the research that led up to the report’s conclusions. Experts from Dr. John Lilly, to Roger Payne, to Karen Pryor, Hec Goodall (of Coffs Harbour and the Pet Porpoise Pool), Dr Bill Dawbin, Dr Peter Singer, and many others testified to the mental, emotional, and social sophistication of dolphins. Using dolphins as the only cetaceans about which much was known, it was projected that whales had many of the same qualities. On this basis, whaling was stopped.

The direct result of the campaign against whaling was another campaign, this time to close down the dolphinariums. Activists, empowered by their success in shutting down the whaling industry (although by the time of the Frost Report, only one whaling station continued to exist, as the whales had nearly been driven to extinction), organised to close the places where dolphins were under the care of humans.

Of the nine dolphin facilities in Australia at that time, only two now remain. A combination of economics, social pressure, and growing investigative powers being vested in various government agencies, began too have their effect: the facilities bowed to pressure and closed down, one by one.

Tragically, many of the dolphins who had been living among humans were now turned out to sea, and were either seen to die, or disappeared quickly, their fates unknown. What does one do with a dolphin if no one is willing to take it? Atlantis, a large marine animal facility in Western Australia, had nine dolphins when they decided to yield to public and government pressures, and close. They offered their dolphins to Underwater World in Perth, who accepted them and began a program to prepare them for a return to, or in some cases a first look at, the sea.

The story is well documented. Of the nine, three disappeared, with only one ever being seen again, despite having had a freeze brand upon its dorsal fin. Three others died, killed by sharks as witnessed by observers. The three remaining dolphins simply refused to leave, and returned repeatedly to the boat harbour, begging fish from boaters.

The three who were begging food were retaken into human care. In a mysterious incident, and to this day not publicly explained as to who did it, or how it was done, they were all poisoned and died. The community expressed its outrage, tears were shed, local authorities insisted that they would not rest until the culprits were found and punished, and the entire affair was eventually shoved back into the collective memory and ignored.

The Pet Porpoise Pool, an outstanding example

When Hec Goodall and some of his mates decided to build an animal rehabilitation centre in Coffs Harbour in the late 60s, it made sense to build it next to an estuary. Land was purchased, funds were raised, and building commenced. By Boxing Day of 1970, the Pet Porpoise Pool was open.

Not long after opening, a call came in, alerting the staff to a stranding event in the nearby Nambucca River. In an oyster lease, on a sandbar, were found four dolphins, badly sunburned, dehydrated, and suffering. Before they could all be rescued, two died. The other two were brought to the PPP and rehabilitation began. Based on Hec's and the Pickering brothers experience at the Jack Evans Porpoise Pool in Tweed Heads, they were able, somehow, to keep the dolphins alive.

The older one was a female and it was initially thought that she was the other one’s mother. Quickly they realised she was not – she was not lactating, and showed no maternal interest in the other, much younger rescuee. The young one was judged to be about one year old, and was named Buck, for the Nambucca River where he was found.

Both young Buck and the female recovered. However, both were badly damaged, and it had taken over a year to deem them healthy again. The female was not strong enough to go back to sea, and young Buck had, by then, entirely forgotten the ways of the wild. He had lived in very clean, disease-and-parasite-free water, had been fed five times a day, and had grown quite attached to his human family.

It was decided, by government officials, veterinarians, and the staff at the Pet Porpoise Pool, to keep both dolphins at the PPP. Thus began the amazing life of Buck. His female friend died of natural causes a few years later, but as of this date, Buck is still with us, at the age of 37, having spent 36 years among humans.

Buck is a delightfully friendly dolphin. He genuinely likes people, approaching all who come to the side of his pool, allowing caresses and seeking out those willing to play catch with a ball. He has, in a conservative estimate, befriended nearly a million people in his many years.

When Hec Goodall was told that he should begin making plans to close the Pet Porpoise Pool, he thought of Buck. Could he survive in an ocean he had not known since he was an infant? Could he, in good conscience, tell the public that, due to government regulations, he was going to condemn Buck to certain death? No, it was not going to happen.

Hec Goodall then began a 20-year campaign to get a permanent license to rehabilitate, or display if unable to be returned to the sea, any dolphin who should make it into his facility. It took a terrible toll on Hec, but he managed to do it. In October of 2004, the Pet Porpoise Pool was granted a permanent license to house dolphins.

Calamity, a female dolphin, was rescued in 1995, not once, but twice. Her tail wrapped with fishing gear, and badly wounded, she was found near the mouth of the Tweed River. Healed and grown strong again, she was returned to the sea. Several months later she was found again, this time with over 10 kilos of fishing line wrapped around her tail stock, so tightly her flukes were nearly severed. This time, once she was healthy again, it was clear that her weakened tail would not allow her to survive at sea.

Many dolphins have come and gone from the Pet Porpoise Pool. Many have been rehabilitated and returned to the ocean. Some have died, despite heroic efforts to help them live. At present (April 2008), there are four dolphins at the PPP, including Buck and Calamity, Buck’s son Zip, who is 19 years old, and young Bella, the energetic daughter of Buck and Calamity.


Buck, Calamity, Zip, and Bella

What are the chances for a dolphin who strands today, to be given a lifetime of excellent care, and a role as a teacher, ambassador, and example of compassionate care for Nature? Unless it happens close to Sea World on the Gold Coast, or near Coffs Harbour, and a National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger can be prevented from killing it immediately, its chances are virtually nonexistent.

Based on the NPWS idea that the Australian public does not want to see dolphins under human care, an old idea left over from the days of the “End the Whaling” campaigns, rangers are told to exercise their authority to euthanise all dolphins who cannot be expected to survive a very short period of stabilisation. In practice, this means that all dolphins are put down if they cannot be refloated and released on the spot.

At present there are only a handful of citizens in Australia trained to act as official dolphin or whale stranding volunteers. The pitifully small numbers, with little equipment, virtually no sea-water pools designated to serve as holding pools, and no government support, can do next to nothing in the event of a stranding.

Where can the dolphins go?

The Cetacean Studies Institute has hopes that a national education campaign can be undertaken, aimed at several outcomes.

1) A change of legislation to govern the NPWS policies regarding stranded dolphins and small whales. Rules must be written that will allow for stranding teams to help dolphins and small whales to be taken into care if at all possible.
2) A national stranding network should be designed, publicised, and supported by government grants, with trained, well-equipped teams and designated salt-water pools listed.
3) Regional centres should be built to rehabilitate, return to the wild, or provide excellent lives for marine animals, at government expense.
4) Legislation should be passed to allow for more licenses for rehab and display facilities where dolphins can be given care, and whose talents can be researched.
5) Because dolphins living among humans live lives that are not as rich with challenges and opportunities to use their extraordinary abilities, and who need, and deserve, enrichment in their lives to keep them healthy, Dolphin-Assisted Therapy should be given support as a means to help dolphins, and as a real therapy, especially valuable for special-needs children, as well as a rejuvenating aspect of wellness programs.

As an independent research and education institute, we urge the Australian public to look closely at this situation, and write or talk to your local representative to initiate new legislation, enabling stranded dolphins and whales to be taken care of, and if necessary, given a meaningful -- and much longer -- life among humans.

They offer us so much. Isn't it time that we show them the compassion they deserve?

Scott Taylor
Ambassador

"In Defense of Dolphins": a book review

I have recently finished reading an important book titled "In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier", by Thomas I. White.

White is a Professor of Business Ethics who has been interested in dolphins for the last 15 years. He focuses on ethics in his teaching and writing, and applies his background in the philosophy of ethics to this book.

His main theme is the assertion that dolphins deserve "person-hood", to be recognised as non-human persons. To this end he gathers much of the important current research into their cognitive abilities, their emotional intelligence, their social nature, and what he repeatedly calls their "alien intelligence".

I feel indebted to Prof. White for this book. He has done us all a great service.

However, I think my indebtedness to him might be of a nature he does not expect.

This book has many merits. It stands tall as a resource for the building movement toward recognition of the rights of dolphins. Professor White has done his research well, with many of the most current research projects into dolphin cognition reviewed.

Here is where my views on this book might be surprising to Dr. White: I believe that this work will engage me for some time to come, as it will no doubt be used by many to continue the fight for the end of the dolphin-human connection. It reveals the strategy of those who would end or seriously impede our growing, and vitally important, relationship with the People of the Sea.

At present I can only skim the issues that are found in this important book.

I find it to be deeply flawed. Not only incomplete, but flawed by its incompleteness. He avoids, overlooks, and ignores important aspects of the story. Granted, the histories and sciences and traditions and philosophies and religions and vast storehouse of human experiences is a lot to take on, but they must if we are to have a full understanding of dolphins and our relationship to them.

There is misdirection in this book, and it appears to be intentional. Very troubling is his abuse of the trust he has created in his readers once he attempts to reach his previously hidden, ultimate goal -- the abolition of all human-managed facilities where dolphins live.

The misuse of the goodwill and trust he has created in the first part of the book, where he builds his careful case for person-hood, is apparent when he dives into his weird conclusions at the end, moving from one paragraph in which he says something is speculative, to the next paragraph where the same thing is now fact. He does this several times.

White uses heavily loaded words in his concluding chapters, in a distinct contrast to his earlier, more balanced word choices. It is a subtle trick as he pursues his goal, as he shades carefully from reasoned argument into biased, emotion-laden rhetoric.

He skips a lot of important information at the end, dismissing Dolphin-Assisted Therapy (DAT) in the same two pages with military uses of dolphins. He has clearly never seen a DAT session and knows next to nothing about it. By putting it in the same subchapter with military uses of dolphins, he vilifies it by association.

His incompleteness includes an apparent lack of interest in, reporting on, or simple knowledge of anything but philosophy and science. His ethics does not include any metaphysics, which I find very odd indeed. Nowhere does he mention one word of any of the spiritual dimensions of the beingness of dolphins. He exhibits the "standard disregard" for the hidden side of life, the feelings and spiritual aspects, which is all the more odd when one reads his many pages about the emotive, affective, feeling-aware dolphins.

White is woefully ignorant of history, it seems. He states that our relationship with dolphins has existed for two thousand years. How very odd that he overlooks both indigenous wisdom and traditions, the very available record of over 15,000 years of contact and relationship with dolphins. If a researcher is willing to add mythology and pre-history, we can extend that time to over 50,000 years. This is telling, as he clearly has only looked at a few of the many dimensions of our important relationship with dolphins.

Matsya Avatar, First Incarnation of Vishnu as a dolphin, 25,000 years ago

He also does not address other important aspects of his argument: what about the "moral standing" of elephants, who are proven to be self-aware by the same tests he extols when applied to dolphins? Do elephants have the same degree of moral standing, thus person-hood, as dolphins? He decries the description of dolphins as objects, as items of ownership, as anything less than beings deserving high status alongside humans, and uses examples of how we should treat them by making it out that we can deny careful consideration for all other "animals". He seems to accept abuse of all animals-- captivity, raising them for food, doing research upon them, hunting them -- but not dolphins.

He insists that all dolphins in captivity are less intelligent, less mentally adept, and definitely discontented, with nothing to interest them. He has apparently not met the same dolphins I know...

After chapters and chapters making a case that we must not anthropomorphise them, he sets about doing that very thing, over and over, during his concluding remarks. He assumes to know their thoughts, levels of contentedness, and mental agility, by using human-value-based projections upon observed behaviours.

Oddly, he says it is hard to make a case against captivity, then attempts to do so, and fails.

He says that nearly all research into dolphins-- their intelligence, health, physical systems, self-awareness, and more -- were done - necessarily - in captive environments, and that this now has no place and must end. He implies that there is nothing left to learn about dolphins that we cannot learn at sea. I am reminded of the man who resigned from the US Patent Office in the early 1900s because he was convinced there was nothing left to invent.

He suggests that dolphins in facilities be "allowed to die out over the next 40-50 years". He does not address the need for decent social interaction, which demands that dolphins be in mixed-gender groups for healthy lives, which produces more dolphins. Does he condone, as Ric O'Barry insists upon, the force-feeding of contraceptive drugs to dolphins? It would seem so.

A happy family of dolphins, Coffs Harbour, Australia

White recognises the failures of attempted release of formerly managed dolphins, so he does not advocate their summary dumping into the sea, which is to his credit, but he does advocate killing them all off by a sort of benign neglect -- and in doing so, going diametrically against his entire main argument for a decent regard for their "persons". He is hypocritical on this issue.

It is clear that White wants to end captivity. He sets out to arrive at that destination, and his first chapters do an admirable job of building a case for much better appreciation of dolphins-- their lives, intelligence, self-awareness, cognitive abilities, and more. But when he gets close to his objective, his arguments suddenly become fact-free, emotive, subjective, and ultimately corrupted by twisted logic, making many of the same errors of fact and logic that he attacked earlier in others.

All in all, his book is very important and will add fuel to many fires. He will be championed by the "Lori Marino camp" (he makes her out to be a major heroine on the dolphin scene, citing her repeatedly). He has also done the Dolphin Embassy a great favour, not only by building a very good case for person-hood, for the Cetacean Nation objective, but he has also clearly demonstrated and outlined the deep flaws in the arguments against DAT and our ever-improving, and critically important, relationship with dolphins.

Scott Taylor
Ambassador

Think different

Showing that you care

Most internet-based petitions achieve nothing. Emails with thousands of names in them do not impress anyone, as these can be easily faked. For this reason, we ignore most requests to become involved in petitions.

However, when we were invited by some friends (Dave Rastovich, Howie Cooke, Hannah Fraser) to join them in a visual protest, a vast collection of photographs of people holding images of dolphins or whales, to be sent to the delegates at the next International Whaling Commission meeting in Peru, we felt that this could be important.

We are alerting all of you who read this to visit the website www.mindsinthewater.com and to link to the Visual Petition. Follow the instructions, download a dolphin or whale picture and take a photo of yourself holding the picture. Then upload the photo back onto the Visual Petition site and join thousands of others who believe as we do, that all whaling and killing of dolphins must stop.

Take the time, do what is asked, and you will have done something that can make a difference for the Cetacean Nation. Besides, it is fun!

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Hannah "Mermaid" Fraser and her husband Dave Rastovich have visited us several times here in Coffs Harbour to swim with the dolphins. They are interviewed in our TV program "The Dolphin People", and if you watch the slides on the Minds in the Water site, or the Visual Petition site, you will see the photo above of Dave with Calamity, hugging her.

If you get a chance to see Dave and his surfer friends performing their music, with their band "Low Pressure Sound System", make sure to go. You won't be sorry, they are fantastic!

The Ambassador

The Dolphin People TV series

We have been working for several years on a TV series, entitled "The Dolphin People". We began principle filming in 2005, and have, to date, completed the first hour of a projected four-part series.

Our Director/Producer/Cinematographer/Editor friend, Richard Mordaunt, has recently returned from a journey to New York, where he attended an international congress on documentary films, meeting with commissioning editors from many companies around the world. We await their responses, confident that we will secure a production deal to complete the series.

Here is a promotional clip:



Enjoy!

To obtain copies of "The Dolphin People" one-hour TV program on DVD, write to dolphin@dolphintale.com.
Copies sell for $30 + $6 postage and handling.

The Ambassador

The Question of Tradition

Japan 'backs down on humpback hunt'
From correspondents in Tokyo
December 20, 2007 01:00am
Article from: Reuters


JAPAN has apparently agreed not to kill humpback whales during its current Antarctic hunt, the US ambassador to Tokyo said today, a move that could help ease criticism of its controversial whaling program.
Japan's whaling fleet set sail last month with plans to catch more than 1000 whales, including 50 humpbacks, which are popular among whale-watchers for their distinctive silhouettes and acrobatic leaps, before returning to port early next year.
Humpbacks were hunted to near extinction until the International Whaling Commission ordered their protection in 1966 and the planned hunt had sparked a loud outcry from activists.
"I think we had an agreement ... between the United States and Japan that humpback whales would not be harvested, I think, until maybe the International Whaling Conference in June,'' US ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer said.
Because of migration patterns, the delay would mean it would be "a while before they are at risk again,'' Mr Schieffer said.
Australia yesterday announced that it would send a fisheries patrol ship to shadow Japan's whaling fleet near Antarctica and gather evidence for a possible international court challenge to halt the yearly hunt.
Separately, Greenpeace sent a ship yesterday to try to stop the Japanese fleet hunting whales.
Japan has long resisted pressure to stop what it calls scientific whaling, insisting that whaling is a cherished cultural tradition.
"Japan's whaling is being conducted in line with international treaties and for the purpose of scientific research. We would like to win the understanding of others,'' a Japanese foreign ministry spokesman said in Tokyo.

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The "cherished cultural tradition" mentioned should be seen like the "cherished tradition" of early English (Saxon) people*, the people of Easter Island**, the native people of the California coast***, who were also dolphin and whale eaters. It proved unsustainable in each case, wreaking havoc on local ecologies. With the extremely high levels of toxic chemicals now found in the meat of dolphins and whales (they are at the top of the chain of "bio-accumulation" and concentrate the toxins in their blubber and the milk of nursing mothers, passing it on from generation to generation, each time gaining in concentrated killing power) the tradition of "cetaceans on the menu" is now deadly. It is time to end this "tradition".

Since the actual tradition of the Japanese whalers and dolphin hunters was to hunt and kill and eat the cetaceans from the waters around Japan (which still goes on in the tens of thousands each year, now), what does killing the whales of the Southern Ocean Sanctuary have to do with tradition?

It just doesn't make any sense.

The Ambassadors

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* "Continuing study of the huge middle and late-Saxon vertebrate assemblage from Flixborough, North Lincolnshire, has shown that the inhabitants of this important settlement were consuming whale and dolphin meat. More than twenty fragments of these marine mammals have been recovered from only 10% of the material so far recorded. These animals may have been caught at sea or, more likely, in the nearby Humber estuary where they may have been stranded. It is possible that they represent trade with the nearby east coast fisheries, although the almost negligible quantities of marine fish from the site appear not to support this theory. More specific identification of the species of whale and dolphin will provide valuable information about the past distribution of cetaceans since all are rare or uncommon visitors to these waters today."

http://www.eng-h.gov.uk/archrev/rev96_7/enviro.htm

~~~~~

** "During the later centuries of the Mayan civilization, a new society was evolving on faraway Easter Island, some 166 square kilometers of land in the South Pacific roughly 3,200 kilometers west of South America and 2,200 kilometers from Pitcairn Island, the nearest habitation. Settled around ad 400, this civilization flourished on a volcanic island with rich soils and lush vegetation, including trees that grew 25 meters tall with trunks 2 meters in diameter. Archeological records indicate that the islanders ate mainly seafood, principally dolphins—a mammal that could only be caught by harpoon from large sea-going canoes. 

The Easter Island society flourished for several centuries, reaching an estimated population of 20,000. As its human numbers gradually increased, tree cutting exceeded the sustainable yield of forests. Eventually the large trees that were needed to build the sturdy canoes disappeared, depriving islanders of access to the dolphins and dramatically shrinking their food supply. The archeological record shows that at some point human bones became intermingled with the dolphin bones, suggesting a desperate society that had resorted to cannibalism. Today the island has fewer than 4,000 residents."
--Lester Brown

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch01_ss4.htm

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*** "The Dolphin Hunters: A Specialized Prehistoric Maritime Adaptation in the Southern California Channel Islands and Baja California
Judith F. Porcasi, Harumi Fujita
American Antiquity, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jul., 2000), pp. 543-566
doi:10.2307/2694535

Abstract
Synthesis of faunal collections from several archaeological sites on the three southernmost California Channel Islands and one in the Cape Region of Baja California reveals a distinctive maritime adaptation more heavily reliant on the capture of pelagic dolphins than on near-shore pinnipeds. Previous reports from other Southern California coastal sites suggest that dolphin hunting may have occurred there but to a lesser extent. While these findings may represent localized adaptations to special conditions on these islands and the Cape Region, they call for reassessment of the conventionally held concept that pinnipeds were invariably the primary mammalian food resource for coastal peoples. Evidence of the intensive use of small cetaceans is antithetical to the accepted models of maritime optimal foraging which assume that shore-based or near-shore marine mammals (i.e., pinnipeds) would be the highest-ranked prey because they were readily encountered and captured. While methods of dolphin hunting remain archaeologically invisible, several island cultures in which dolphin were intensively exploited by people using primitive watercraft and little or no weaponry are presented as possible analogs to a prehistoric Southern California dolphin-hunting technique. These findings also indicate that dolphin hunting was probably a cooperative endeavor among various members of the prehistoric community."

The Proof is in the Pool

Some recent wonderful moments in our Wellness Program:

We had a woman attend who is a therapist, whose specialty is Cranial-Sacral Therapy. Her skill in her work -- using sensitivity to detect and redirect the pulses of energy that move up and down our spines -- was evident in her approach to the dolphins.

She was a rare person, one who was able to slow down, to look into each moment as it came, and to see the tender details. It seemed, as we took pictures of her experience, that we could not take a poor picture of her. Even when we were using our sequential-shot setting, taking pictures at the rate of 1.7 shots per second, each photo was wonderful. Not easy to edit...

Here she is having a sweet moment with young Bella--


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Another guest was a "bird lady". She traveled to Coffs Harbour from western Victoria with her birds. She loves her birds, and her sensitive understanding of them was expressed in her hands -- and they were fascinating to Bella. She approached the woman repeatedly, requesting contact, rubbing against her, spinning around and returning for more touch, more strokes, and especially, having her tail rubbed and massaged.

Here is a single frame of a long string of photos from their time together--


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One thing that has become very evident: when you want to get the attention of dolphins, do something interesting. Sometimes the best thing to do is to ignore them and do something they will find odd -- like swim away from them toward the empty deep end of the pool....


Our time among the dolphins -- swimming, diving, dreaming, listening and learning -- is about to take a short break. We will be away from them for about six weeks, during the busy season of the year, when they entertain thousands of visitors. We, and the PPP staff, are careful to not ask too much of them. The dolphins are very busy keeping so many people happy at this time of year.

Our Dolphin EDventures Wellness Program will recommence in February. For details, go to www.dolphintale.com.

A final image:
Amanda among the pod...


Scott and Amanda
The Ambassadors