Dolphin leap at the Dolphin Research Center

Swimming with Dolphins

As a child, I always wanted to swim with dolphins. And, if I’m honest, as an adult as well.

Swimming with dolphins has become a cliché in the repertoire of half-formed dreams, wishes and wonderings of those who realise that their time on this earth has limits. Yet it wasn’t until I sat down to write this post that it occurred to me to question why.

Dolphins in the Wild

I’ve been lucky, catching sight of dolphins in the wild off the shores of Oman, Tenerife and even Dingle in Ireland (although, to be fair, it was dolphin singular in that last case.) Each time, even in Ireland, sunbeams sparkled across the waves, almost daring onlookers with their brilliance.

“Are you sure?” they seem to say. “You’re sure you want to see dolphins? Look closely, then, and prepare yourself for staring into the light of the sun itself.”

Wet dolphins reflect light like diamonds. They’re also fast: blazing through the water, throwing crescents above the sea while they race besides the boat.

The Dolphin Research Centre, Florida

Yet today there wasn’t going to be a boat. I was standing in the Dolphin Research Center in Florida - and training, instead of chasing, was the name of the game.

To the sound of whooping and hollering, we lazed through the Florida Keys sunshine to meet the team, led by aficionado Mary Stella.

“Y’know,” she says to us in a sunshine state drawl. “If I were a dolphin, I’d want to be born here.”

There’s a tricky moment, I think, when talking to anyone who deals with animals in captivity. For a start, you have to remember to avoid the word captivity, a task that inexplicably becomes impossible as soon as you have to remember to do it.

Research centres, sanctuaries and programmes like these are clearly gallons of water away from cramped zoos and performing circuses. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Mary, and the other members of the team, show far more devotion towards the animals in their care than I do.

I’ve written before about my unease and unanswered questions about aquariums – and my eyes and mind have been opened by the replies in the comments sections.

Yet still, as someone besides me murmurs under his breath about wanting to live free in the oceans, questions arise and I just wish we could talk more openly about one or two things.

Perhaps burned by the press in the past, the staff remain cautious today.

The Dolphin Research Center lives, no soaks, in the Florida sunshine. The trainers wear splash vests and swim suits and the dolphins really do seem to wear smiles.

Nets and fences carve up the ocean into spaces for the dolphins, who roam freely in between.

A Male Dolphin Lets Off Steam

Dolphin Psychology

“During Hurricane Wilma,” says Mary, “the water covered the walkways and the dolphins could have left. But they didn’t.”

This is exactly the kind of thing I wish they’d talk more about. They’re a specialised research centre, performing robust tests into dolphin counting, object permanence (remembering where you left the car keys,) foetal echocardiography and more.

They should know, then, psychologically speaking, that just because an animal doesn’t try to escape, doesn’t mean it wants to stay. There’s the phenomenon of learned helplessness, whereby animals realise that no matter what they do, they cannot break through a certain barrier. Eventually, when that barrier is removed, they no longer try. It leads animals to starve themselves when food is plenty; it’s thought to explain why abducted children stay with the adults who molest them. After enough failed attempts, animals simply learn that it’s too dangerous to keep on trying.

Of course, this may have nothing to do with the dolphins here. The science geek inside me would just have liked to explore it as a possibility.

Everyone seems happy...

Training Mice, Men & Dolphins

As it is, just a short afternoon here opens up all kinds of questions about animal training (and yes, that includes husbands who won’t pick up their socks, children who won’t tidy their rooms, women who won’t stop nagging and writers who won’t stop using clichés.)

In each pen, we see different stages of training. In the main one, the adult males leap into the air, turning somersaults, twisting and shimmering beneath the sun to the whoops of encouragement from the team.

“We use positive reinforcement here,” Mary explains, as the males munch their way through a coolbox load of fish and good cheer. “We don’t punish.”

A dolphin trainer with fish

Behind me, I see what happens when something goes wrong.

Two small platforms bob into the water, where children take turns at touching or training the young dolphins. With a deft, quiet signal, everyone walks away.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Someone did something they’re not supposed to,” replies one of the trainers, leaving me to wonder whether we’re talking about child or dolphin.

“Dolphins are just like you,” says Mary, when I try to find out what happened. “They get grumpy. They have mood swings, too.”

A scurrilous accusation.

“Dolphins are just like you,” says Mary. “They have mood swings, too.”

Across the way, a baby dolphin takes its baby flips through the training routine. It wins a fish each time it correctly touches the target pole. The next stage involves correctly identifying its name as a symbol – a cross or a crescent or a circle, say, – next to the target pole.

“Dolphins pick out the symbols with echolocation,” explains Jennifer, a Senior Education Officer. “They can only see for about 10 metres – and they can’t see well ahead.”

Babies watching babies

Besides the merry baby in training, baby humans are at play.

At the Dolphin Research Center, you can pay to swim with dolphins. You can also, as I saw, learn to paint with them as well.

This is dolphin training at its most subtle. The trainer before us, sporting a hat and a trademark suntan, merely touches his fingers and thumbs together in the slightest of moves to exact the most intuitive of responses.

“You want a photo?” he says. “You don’t need to ask me. Look.”

At a quiver of his fingers, the mother dolphin pauses from painting to swim by and pose.

It’s impressive. Even breathtakingly, cliché-ridden, awesomely so.

The boy’s face fills with delight as he braces the T-shirt against the dolphin’s paintbrush, while I still can’t explain why dolphins, rather than tarantulas, pigeons or rats, hold such appeal.

Perhaps it comes down to this worldly-wise quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.”

 

Or perhaps, it comes from another:

• The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish

As for me, I still have more questions and, in spite of that, I’d still love to swim with dolphins.

In the meantime: So long and thanks for all the tweets.

Small gestures are enough...

Swimming with Dolphins -Disclosure

I visited Florida as a guest of Virgin Holidays as part of a Florida Photo Safari both at the Dolphin Research Center and elsewhere. The usual, exciting, disclosure policy applies…Find more photo adventures in the Florida Keys here

Swimming with Dolphins in Florida

PS – You can swim with dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center

Not Quite Swimming With Dolphins first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Baird Glacier, Alaska

Chasing Glaciers in Alaska

Bright white and blue – that’s the typical image of a glacier, isn’t it? Milky glacial water, iridescent ice and a sky full of sunshine or perhaps the swirl of falling snow.

The Baird Glacier in southeast Alaska has a rather different chemistry. From a distance, it looks dirty, as though all the flutes and ridges have tumbled down a chimney and emerged with a dusting of soot. It also pulled off the usual optical illusion, refusing to change in size no matter how far our skiff travelled: an icy giant, forever immense, forever out of reach.

Even close up, the glacier had mind-melting tricks up its sleeves.

“This is the terminal moraine,” explained Kevin, our guide from InnerSea Discoveries, as we stepped and slipped onto dry land. “As a glacier melts away, it carries rocks, gravel and sand with it. These deposits form what is called the moraine.”

Incidentally, a structure far more exciting than it sounds.

Ice & Mud, Alaska

Luminous spongy moss covered the first section, with boulders like polished eggs staring up at us from odd angles. Closer to the glacier, gold and silver flecks merged with the mud, capturing frozen veins of ice in lattices in between.

Kevin crouched down and rested his hand in one of the streams, causing metallic ribbons to flow away from his fingers. “I could sit and watch this all day,” he said.

I couldn’t, though. I was distracted by the stretches of magic mud. These sparkling expanses bounced and wobbled underfoot, reducing us to Lilliputian figures on a colossal plate of jelly. The suspension of earth and water held our weight for around three running jumps before the cracks, literally, appeared, and fluid rushed up, sinking our feet into the ground. Gleeful, childish fun!

Baird Glacier, Alaska

Yet for all the geological wizardry, the glacier we came to visit looked as far away as ever. Our boots crunched on dirt and ice. A few people fell, a few more contorted themselves in the acrobatic arts of camera protection. Finally someone asked the question.

“Er…Are we going to get to walk on the glacier?”

Kevin lifted his eyes from the kaleidoscope of minerals and his face crinkled. “This is the glacier.”

We spun around, confused by the vision in the distance, disoriented by the muddy ice underfoot (and let’s face it, embarrassed by the answer.)

“Listen,” he said and we huddled around a hole in the ground. From just below the surface, the rumble of a subterranean river urged me to take a step forward and look down into the void. Pure brilliant white and wild-eyed blue twisted into each other as the glacier dissolved into a torrent beneath me.

Alaska, I thought. Pristine beauty beneath a rugged façade – and laced with danger, unless you know what you’re doing. I retraced my steps and allowed my mind to fill with a single thought.

Wow.

Zen in Alaska

Alaska Glacier Tours – Practicalities

Wear sturdy shoes and warm, wind-proof clothes. Make sure you are travelling with a guide you trust and who knows the area.

I visited the Baird Glacier as a guest of American Safari Cruises and InnerSea Discoveries, who run luxury and adventure tours through Alaska. Photos and videos were taken using a Sony NEX-5. As usual, though, all opinions are my own.

Gold Dust & Magic Mud – A Glacier Tour in Alaska first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Impala, Moremi Game Reserve

I’m offline in the ice of Alaska at the moment (I know, poor me) – but here’s a photo for now: an impala in the Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana.

Camouflage in Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Safari in the Okavango Delta

Inside a Mokoro

Despite the stillness of the water, there’s no sound of silence. Insects skim across the reeds with a soft buzz and woodpeckers tap against acacia trees. Birds chatters in all directions – yet the loudest by far are the doves.

Chu charra, chu charra.

“Work harder, work harder,” says Rodger, slipping a pole into the delta and easing us forward.

“Drink lager, drink lager,” says another guide, Amos, illustrating a different point of view.

From where I’m sitting, level with the water in a slender mokoro, I hear something else. Botswana, Botswana, Botswana.

The Okavango Delta

The Okavango Delta, Botswana

Eight hundred miles from the Atlantic and a thousand from the Indian Ocean, the Okavango Delta looks like a miniature version of the earth from the air, an expanded jigsaw of land swirls amid deep and spreading blue.  Its water seeps up through the soil, having landed as monsoon rain a thousand miles north in Angola. It’s long been protected, both by government intervention and because its soggy, swampy nature makes building roads here impossible.

To get this deep into the delta, we’ve flown from Maun in a four-seater Cessna, a tiny contraption  that trembled during the descent as though in awe of the expanse below. An elephant greeted us on the runway and warthogs scuttled past us in the camp.

Conservation in Botswana

Botswana takes its wildlife pretty seriously. Even on foot, guides can’t carry firearms for self-defence, only a gunpowder-laced contraption that resembles a syringe. When an elephant veers too close to the camp, a single empty gunshot rips through the vast sky.

Should an elephant charge, or a hippo rear up from the water, our survival depends on our behaviour, we are told. Stand still, stay quiet – and if told to run, try not to fall into an aardvark hole.

Not everyone is reassured.

An Elephant Greets Us on the Runway

“Why not take a gun with you?” asks one member of our camp. “If you killed something by accident, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“A lifetime in prison,” comes the reply.

There’s a rare moment of silence before we climb aboard.

Stand still, stay quiet – and try not to fall into an aardvark hole.

Mokoro on the Delta

Despite the danger, it’s hard to imagine a more peaceful mode of transport. A cross between a punt and a canoe, mokoros used to be the only way to travel around here. Previous generations hand-carved them from ebony and kigelia trees but had to wait for more than 100 years for the trunk to reach the right size. Since a wooden mokoro only has a five year lifespan, the arrival of a fibreglass version was greeted with about the same enthusiasm as the discovery of sliced bread.

Today, boats use small motors to churn along the main waterway to Maun, carrying people, food and beer. The mokoros, however, fashion their own way through the reed fields, the long grass spreading apart before them in a deferential rustle.

This off-piste navigation isn’t just for entertainment, though.

Giraffe on Safari

 “The only animal I fear,” says Rodger when I ask him, “is the hippopotamus. That is why we stay away from the main channel.”

“But,” I state the obvious. “We do need to cross it… eventually.”

Rodger sinks the pole into the delta again and water sloshes gently against the thin-walled mokoro.

 “I look for bubbles,” he says slowly. He grins. “And I drive fast!”

Chu-charra, chu-charra.

 The doves reach a crescendo as we glide past giraffe, baboons and impala, while Rodger keeps watch. My mind drifts to his interpretation of what the doves are saying.

Like the rhythm of the mokoro itself, his version soothes me.

More information on arranging a safari in Botswana’s Okavango Delta coming soon…

UPDATE: Arranging a mokoro safari in Botswana’s Okavango Delta

Okavango Delta Flowers

The Safari Symphony- The Okavango Delta, Botswana first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

The Oceanográfico

The Oceanográfico forms part of the spectacular City of Arts & Sciences complex in Valencia. As the largest aquarium in Europe, it brings those of us who are not marine biologists closer to the underwater world. It’s a place of education and conservation. It teaches hope and it inspires. It expands horizons and it aims to create a better world for the future.

And yet…it makes me uneasy.

Seahorse

Jellyfish

But then there are sharks.

Sharks

Walruses.

Walruses

And whales.

Whales

And suddenly the proportions don’t seem right.

What is my problem with these confined spaces? Are they smaller than the world’s oceans? Of course, but the story doesn’t end there. I’m not a Greenpeace crusader and I don’t work in an animal sanctuary. I’m not even vegetarian.

So why do these exhibits bother me?

I try to rationalize things. Qualified vets tend to these animals. No-one crams them into a factory the way they do for eggs and milk; no matador will slaughter them for entertainment.

These animals are even free from obligations during the day – well fed, kept warm, kept safe. I can hardly say the same for millions of people scattered across the globe in zones of famine and war and I don’t even need to go that far.

Inside Valencia's Aquarium

Across Europe and the USA, hundreds of thousands of people will get up and go to jobs they hate, sit in spaces much smaller than those I am questioning here and go home to get up and do it all over again. They will pay others to bring up their young, because they see no other way of finding food and shelter.

In many places in the world, people feel compelled to sell their children.

So, until I’m crusading against each and every one of those things – do I have any right to feel uncomfortable about conditions in an aquarium?

Disclosure: To avoid any confusion, this visit was nothing to do with the recent BlogTripF1 to Valencia.

Does Size Matter? Inside Europe’s Largest Aquarium… first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Tigers - Will You See One?

“We’ve been here all week,” say the first couple we meet in Sawai Madhopur, when we ask the question that’s on everyone’s mind.

“Yesterday, we saw some tracks,” adds a woman who travelled here after an intensive yoga course.

The safari guide shrugs. “Nothing is guaranteed.”

Tigers. In this dusty, two-street town in Rajasthan, it’s slightly embarrassing to see so many people focused on one big cat. Especially when you’re one of them. Yet with only 4000 tigers left alive (across the whole world, not just in India,) tiger-fever is easier to understand.
Tigers decorate the safari jeeps, their pictures cover the hotel walls. They’re almost all you’ll find in the guidebooks and they dominate conversations between locals and tourists alike.

Tigers, tigers, tigers. Have you seen one? Do you think you will?

The Road to Ranthambore

Sawai Madhopur obsesses over tigers because it sits on the edge of the Ranthambore National Park, a key part of the initial Project Tiger conservation programme. Sadly, over the years it has become ensnared in its own poaching controversies, but it remains one of the best places in Rajasthan to spot a tiger. Safaris leave twice a day, once in the morning and then again at dusk, and the number of vehicles entering the park is strictly limited.

Yet as the safari guide rightly pointed out, “Nothing is guaranteed.”

Despite the tourist board rhetoric, many people do spend a week here without seeing a tiger. A colleague, Wild Junket, contacted me on twitter recently to ask whether or not it was even worth the trip.

I didn’t have as many words at my disposal then as I do now, but my answer was… ”Yes.”

On a Tiger Safari

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

Tigers star in the line-up, tigers get all the glory, but… the truth is that Ranthambore bursts with wildlife, with velvet-purple lakes and monkeys swinging through sunset. Owls hoot softly from the trees and wild deer bolt through the long and golden grass. Old, abandoned forts cast shadows over the valley below…

If tigers had never existed (and at the rate we’re going, they soon won’t), then I strongly believe that people would still travel to see this park.

Ranthambore is beautiful. Its twisted trees, crisp dried landscape and its timeless feel deserve a visit. If you manage to see the queen of the jungle, that’s just the crowning glory.

As for me? Did my dream of tigers come true? You’ll have to read this article to find out.

Happy hunting.

Ranthambore...

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright – How and Where to Find You first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Japan has no shortage of onsen, natural hot springs where people dip in and out of skin-scalding pools in order to soak, scrub and just relax and say ahhhhh. It’s a tradition that has become a widespread ritual, with both five star hotels and backpacker hostels offering indoor versions of a stingingly hot bath.

Yet in Jigokudani Yaenkoen, macaque monkeys got there first.

In a steep, leafy corner of the Joshin-Etsu Kogen National Park, around 200 monkeys prance, preen and groom before dipping into the steaming onsen themselves.

Some are sage and relaxed, clearly used to the process…

For others, frightened about diving into the deep end, they look (if you’ll forgive me) a little wet around the ears…

There are those who clearly command authority…

Those who hide from the spotlight…

And those who just want to have fun…

See more travel photos at Delicious Baby’s Photo Friday

Hot Springs for Stressed Monkeys, Japan first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Pilot Whales

It’s certainly not the first time Pedro has hunted whales, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. Despite a seafaring tradition of more than three generations plus hauling tourists along the waves every day, he still wears that expression of childlike wonder.

It’s not the first time Pedro has hunted whales…

He’s right, of course, and I stare, mesmerized as sleek-skinned pilot whales rise out of the water. At first glance, they look like giant dolphins, with their glistening dorsal fins, curved leaps and semi-wicked glints in their eyes. Water falls off them like showers of diamonds, yet their chunky body shape still suggests that someone got their proportions wrong.

Los Gigantes

It’s only when we find a school of dolphins half an hour later that the difference becomes clear. Dolphins are sprightlier, bouncier, faster. They are also much, much smaller.
Pilot Whales, I learn, are 6 metres long at birth and can grow to weigh 3 tons. In a happy change from many whale-related stories, they are not critically endangered, nor even under threat.

Water falls off them like diamonds.

The same cannot be said for the fishing business that Pedro grew up with in Puerto de Santiago. His grandfather practiced line-caught tuna fishing, a dolphin-friendly but backbreaking method of heaving the hulk of a tuna fish onto a small boat by means of a single line. Days started at four in the morning and drove on until eight at night for all but two months of the year.
Now that tradition has gone.

Watching Dolphins

“Contamination,” says Pedro, when I ask. “And trawler nets.”

We both gaze across the perfect sky and cliffs that frame the Atlantic Ocean. Would Pedro have preferred to be a fisherman?

He pauses for a moment. “Fishing is hard work, very hard work. It is also very good for the body, good for the form.” He pats his stomach and bellows with laughter.

He pauses for a moment. “Everything has to change.”

Seagulls swoop from overhead to snatch food from his crewmate’s outstretched hands.

Everything has to change. It is life.

“We have to change,” Pedro tells me. “Everything has to change. It is typical, it is life.” He hands me a whale-watching certificate, smiles and then saunters down to encourage the seagulls.

DIY Dolphin & Whale Watching

Pedro is the captain of Nashira Uno. The Maritima Acantilados group organizes Whale & Dolphin Cruises from Los Gigantes in Tenerife. For the suspicious among you, I paid for this myself. That isn’t always the case but the one constant is that I say when it’s been subsidised.

For more whale and dolphin watching photos, visit Inside the Travel Lab’s collection on either Flickr or Facebook.

How Whales Saved Fishermen first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Thanks to Mary and Sean for the question about visiting Pandas. Yes, I wandered through China a few years back – inspired by the book Wild Swans and driven to see Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, the Terracotta Soldiers, the Forbidden Palace and then… I’d better stop myself there. You wanted to know about pandas, after all.

About Pandas

Apart from being the cover girl for WWF, pandas are among the most threatened species on earth with only around 2000 left.

That’s 2000 altogether, across the whole world. I know people with more than 2000 friends on facebook.

Pandas only eat bamboo and (rarely) attack humans – two reasons that may explain both why they are adored – and why they are endangered.

Seeing Pandas

Given how scarce pandas are, it’s not surprising that you won’t find much of a choice if you want to see them. I went to the Chengdu Panda Reserve, deep in the Sichuan Province. The Chengdu reserve describes itself as a “Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding”, which seems to translate into part zoo, part conservation area, part wilderness, and part science lab.

You’ll see plenty of red pandas and golden monkeys in the forest paths that meander around the main building. You may also see infant pandas in the labs, along with posters and presentations on panda breeding.

But will you see panda bears? When I visited, I saw several elderly pandas chomping on bamboo while their cartoon-like grandchildren tumbled around the floor.

Hang on a sec, is travelling to see pandas such a good idea anyway?

Like most things, it depends. Conservation groups and governments recognise the value of an industry where an animal is worth more alive than dead. Successful eco-tourism forms a powerful bargaining chip when convincing local communities to conserve habitats and halt poaching. Some groups, such as WWF, even advertise approved tours.

Travel considerately, treat animals and habitats with respect – and enjoy!

Hope that helped to answer your question. It’s been a few years since I was in China but I’d love to hear about what the place is like now. Drop a link below after you get back and tell us all about it.

If you’re interested in catching other endangered species in the non-poaching sense then try this article from Bootsnall.

Panda Photos – from Chi King. I’m afraid my photos are locked away in storage somewhere…

UPDATE: Travel China Guide tell me that Pandas are indeed still at Chengdu – and that you can visit them through one of their Chengdu Tours.

Tracking Panda Bears in China first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

These days, I take promises of viewing exotic wildlife with more than a pinch of saltwater. Particularly endangered species. To find pandas I had to travel for days. To glimpse a tiger, I shivered morning and night under a blanket of frost.

But to see turtles in Barbados? I only needed to hold my nose and leap from a gleaming white boat.

Armed with only a bikini and a snorkel, I was surrounded as these tiger-striped beauties closed in. And they weren’t shy. I gulp and choke on the seawater as my head drops below the surface and my throat burns, trying not to swim for fear of damaging them with my flailing limbs.

Then something extraordinary happened.

The romantic inside me believes they saw my struggle; the cynic says I was in the way. Whatever the reason, a  giant glided skyward from beneath me and kept on going until I was standing on its back, my head lifted into the air to breathe.

It seems that I was shy, not them, and I had to wonder who was viewing whom.

Turtle Safari

Turtle Safaris – Saltwater & Scepticism first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...