National Aquarium’s dolphins learn to travel
New skills will be required when they are relocated in 2020
There was something about the big blue mat that on this particular morning Jade just didn’t like.
It made no matter that the 18-year-old bottlenose dolphin, one of seven owned by the National Aquarium, had seen this identical pad many times before. Perhaps she was spooked by the photographer at the edge of the pool holding a clicking black box that obscured her face. Or the problem might have been the big green beach umbrella that threw unfamiliar circles of shade over the pool.
Whatever the reason, when trainer April Martin knelt down at one end of the mat and positioned her hand with her fingers pointing skyward (a signal for Jade to propel herself out of the water and land belly-first on the pad) the dolphin was having none of it. She made a half-hearted little hop barely strong enough to push her snout onto the mat and then immediately Trainer Kelsey Wood gives water to Maya, an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. Dolphins are being trained to voluntarily take additional water during travel. fell back into the pool.
Martin turned and walked a few steps away from the bucket of fish.
“Jade isn’t getting positive reinforcement,” said Kerry Diehl, the aquarium’s assistant curator of the Dolphin Discovery exhibit. “But she’ll get a chance to try again.”
During the next two and a half years, Jade will have many opportunities to perform that maneuver — the first in a series of skills that the trainers hope will culminate in the fall of 2020 with the seven dolphins riding in the back of a truck and then on a plane to their new home in a giant oceanside sanctuary.
In 2016 and after years of protests by animal activists who said it was inhumane to keep such intelligent animals in a small concrete pen, the aquarium announced that it had embarked upon a bold, five-year plan to relocate the dolphins, building on a national trend of placing captive marine mammals in larger pens that incorporate aspects of their natural environment.
But the aquarium’s $10 million-$15 million undertaking is unprecedented, according to Janet Mann, a Georgetown University professor and dolphin expert — and is accompanied by unprecedented
hazards.
“This is a brave thing for the aquarium to do,” said Mann, who directs the PotomacChesapeake Dolphin Project and Australia’s Shark Bay Dolphin Project. “They are taking a big risk, and I admire them for making the effort. Unless it’s a glorious success — and I hope that it is — they are going to get criticism from everyone.”
The aquarium will attempt to improve the dolphins’ quality of life by vastly increasing the size of their habitat and exposing them to the fish, sea plants and changes in the weather they would encounter in the wild, while simultaneously providing the food and medical care on which they depend. And though visitors won’t be able to get as close to the dolphins as they can in the aquarium, they’ll be able to observe the captivating creatures from a seaside boardwalk.
The new sea pen will be between 50 and 100 times larger than the dolphins’ current home, said John Racanelli, the aquarium’s president and CEO — potentially up to 800 feet long by 500 feet wide — and it will be separated from open water by a double fence. There will be a research center, a medical laboratory, and a food preparation and refrigeration site on the premises.
“We’ve looked at about 30 possible locations so far,” Racanelli said. “It’s very, very likely that our final site will be in the Florida Keys.”
A leading contender is a former quarry in Cudjoe Key about 20 miles from Key West. Another possibility is a site on No Name Key inside a deer refuge.
However large the sea pen is, Mann said, it won’t approximate the dolphins’ natural range of about 100 square kilometers. But releasing the dolphins into the ocean isn’t a viable option.
“People love these animals and they want to let them go free, but if they do, they aren’t going to make it,” she said. “Even in the wild, it takes dolphins a long time to perfect foraging behaviors. For dolphins raised in captivity, it could take a generation or two for them to learn the necessary hunting skills.”
Racanelli said that the aquarium is seeking private funds to buy and build its new site, though some funding will be provided by a fee charged to visitors. Because the aquarium’s goal isn’t to raise successive generations of dolphins dependent on humans, the animals will continue to receive their equivalent of birth control pills. But Racanelli said that the sanctuary might eventually become a home for other captive dolphins. Or it could serve as a refuge for severely injured wild dolphins.
“We’re trying to find a site that can hold up to 20 dolphins,” Racanelli said. “We’ve already started to hear from other organizations who would like to retire their dolphins. We’ll be able to accommodate a reasonable number of requests, provided we get the funding.”
Meanwhile, the aquarium’s staff is slowly introducing unfamiliar elements that the dolphins will find in their new environment. Staff members are experimenting with wearing sunglasses (necessary for humans working outdoors in the Florida Keys).
Algae is being allowed to grow in the dolphins’ tank for the first time, and eventually, water from their natural environment will be mixed with the water in their current pens — first a trickle, then much more. “There are organisms that these animals will encounter that they haven’t been exposed to, microbes that will get inside their guts and lungs,” Mann said.
Though it’s impossible to anticipate everything that the dolphins will encounter in their new home, Mann said there is plenty trainers can predict — including the need to put the animals into a truck and transport them to the airport. That’s why Martin has been working to teach Jade what trainers call “hauling up.”
Once Jade is comfortable leaping onto At the National Aquarium, trainer Kelsey Wood uses the target pool as she works with Maya, an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. during a training session to benefit them when they move to a new environment in a warmer climate at the end of 2019.
“This is a brave thing for the aquarium to do. They are taking a big risk, and I admire them for making the effort.” Janet Mann, director of the Potomac-Chesapeake Dolphin Project and Australia’s Shark Bay Dolphin Project
the mat, it will be replaced with a stretcher. She’ll learn to lie quietly while people gather on either side and load her into the back of an open-top truck fitted with a large container holding water. Jade will rest on the stretcher, with the water lapping about halfway up her sides. Trainers will climb in the truck bed and ride alongside the dolphins, monitoring their vital signs and behavioral cues to ensure that the animals don’t become over-stressed.
“Eventually, the dolphins will be in the truck as it’s driving around the streets of Baltimore,” Racanelli said. “Our goal is that when they get ready to move to the sanctuary in 2020, they will have done every behavior associated with the move but ride in an airplane.”
For now, it’s enough for Jade to leap completely out of the water and onto the blue mat. After giving the dolphin a few seconds to collect herself, Martin walked back to the blue pad, crouched beside it and again positioned her hand at a vertical angle. Without hesitation, the dolphin lifted herself from the water, landed fully on the mat, and shoved her snout into Martin’s palm.
The trainer threw out both of her arms to the sides, smiled extra-wide and exclaimed, “Good girl!” Then she tapped Jade on her back — a sign for the dolphin to return to the pool — and tossed her some fish.
Jade seemed aware that she’d performed well. “Ack, ack, ack,” she squealed excitedly.
“You’re amazing, kiddo,” Martin said. Trainer Rebekah Miller plays with Chesapeake as a reward after the trainers practiced blood collection behavior. Jade, left, and Spirit appear to pose for the camera after their training sessions.