Dolphin Quest News

by Cameron Dabney Dolphin Quest Hawaii’s Regional Education Supervisor Cameron Dabney joined the Cascadia Research Collective team in the field this past July on an incredible marine mammal study off the Kona Coast of Hawaii’s Big Island. This is a first-hand account of her experience. I arrive at the harbor early, ecstatic about my day ahead. The air and water are still and the reflections of the boats glisten as the morning light peaks over the mountains. The smell of fish and gasoline waft in the distance. Mesmerized by the calmness of the early harbor morning, I sit on the dock acknowledging that one of my lifetime dreams is about to come true: I am about to go out and do marine mammal surveys with Robin Baird, world-renowned marine mammal biologist with the Cascadia Research Collective. When Robin and his…

On March 31, 2014, and April 5, 2014, Dolphin Quest Bermuda welcomed two amazing additions to our family. Bailey gave birth to her daughter Brighton first, and Ely gave birth to her baby girl Devon a few days later. Both calves are now a little over 8 months old and learning all sorts of new skills. Just like children, every dolphin calf is unique, and while Brighton has already acquired a taste for fish, Devon has shown great interest in basketballs and hula-hoops. Dolphins are mammals just like you and I, and a baby dolphin’s diet is initially made up entirely of their mom’s milk. When the calves show us they are ready, usually around three months of age, we begin to offer them very small pieces of fish. In the beginning, these small pieces are a very exciting new…

Dolphin Quest is featured in a fascinating new documentary called “Understanding Dolphins – What You Should Know”. This short film highlights the importance of the critical research contributions of facilities like Dolphin Quest that provide researchers with controlled environments and trained animals for data collection that would be impossible in the wild. The documentary explores how dolphins in human care continue to inspire the next generations of environmental stewards. (Dr. Jay Sweeney and Julie Rocho-Levine of Dolphin Quest have cameos starting at 10:18.) Click here to watch

Dolphin Quest Oahu (DQO) presented a new training concept, Wait & Go, at the prestigious International Marine Animal Trainers’ Association conference in 2013. The Wait & Go game involves a series of three hand signals. The first signal cues the start of the game and asks the dolphin to wait for additional information. The trainer then gives a second hand signal for a previously trained behavior, such as a pectoral flipper wave. The dolphin doesn’t move, and continues to wait until he sees the third signal, which means go and perform the behavior. While learning the “rules” of the game, the wait proved more challenging for the dolphins. They know more than 100 hand signals and for years have performed a behavior immediately after seeing its signal. Trainers made sure to reward the dolphins for waiting as well as going,…

Dolphin Quest’s expert animal behaviorists do an amazing job training our dolphins, but do you wonder if fish can be trained? At Dolphin Quest Hawaii, we are working on some amazing fish training in our new tide pool habitat. Right now, we have a gorgeous porcupine puffer fish, a very hungry snapper, a couple of lined butterfly fish, and some very cool goat fish that are all learning new behaviors. Just like the dolphins, training fish starts with trust. Our multispecies trainers work day in and day out to make sure the fish trust them enough to approach them. From there, the relationship allows our trainers to teach the fish to stay in one place, feed from their hands, come when called (“recall”), and so much more! All of this has one common goal: to allow us to better take care…

As part of our commitment to global stewardship, Dolphin Quest is dedicated to conservation and the advancement of marine mammal research. Dolphin Quest Oahu (DQO) is currently participating in a groundbreaking long-term research project studying dolphin lung capacity. The scientific significance of this work is to develop non-invasive methods for estimating wild marine mammals’ metabolic…

Through the years, Dolphin Quest Hawaii has given back to the local and international community in many ways. One of the biggest opportunities to do that comes through research. This year, the local community in Kona, on Hawaii’s Big Island, had a very special visit from a group of killer whales. On the first day,…