During our recent trip to San Diego, Cheryl and I had the opportunity to participate in Sea World's Dolphin Interaction Program. This two-hour program is divided between a classroom session and working with the dolphins in their training pool.
The classroom session focuses on dolphin anatomy and physiology, as well as the training techniques used there at Sea World.
The highlight of the program is getting into the pool with the dolphins and being able to interact with them.
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Cheryl and I are posing for the camera with Bullet, one of
the veteran performers at Sea World in San Diego.
Bullet is a hybrid common and bottle-nose dolphin. Her trainer said that she could learn in two days what most dolphins could absorb in a month. |
| Here's Cheryl taking Bullet for a walk. Part of the interaction session is learning a few of the hand signals that are used to direct the dolphin in their performances. |  |
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Cheryl immediately formed an attachment to Buster, a two-year-old common dolphin. He was rescued from the beach shortly after he was born. His mother died on the beach and the staff at Sea World received permission to hand-raise him. |
| Okay, I have to admit the little guy is cute. . . His training is still in progress (the dolphin's -- Dennis is fairly well trained). He knows a lot of commands, but sometimes refuses to comply. The staff never uses negative reinforcement to train the dolphins-- instead, you just stand perfectly still for three seconds whenever a dolphin doesn't perform correctly. |
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I was the first person in our group to try my "hand" at signals, so we started off with getting Bullet to rise to my hand. This is the first step toward getting the dolphins to jump into the air. |
If you would link more information about this program, take a look at the Sea World Web page.