As a consultant and research coordinator for ORCA, I was responsible for the everyday care and feeding of the dolphins, and our first step in the release of Joe and Rosie was to move them to a natural sea pen that would serve as a temporary holding pen until an appropriate release site had been located.
In the spring of 1987, I began 'un-training' the two dolphins. Un-training dolphins means helping them forget all the things they were trained to do. This is done by simply letting their trained behaviors go un-reinforced, thus reinforcing their natural behaviors.
During the years that Joe and Rosie lived in captivity among human beings, they were made entirely dependent on humans, swimming with them, playing with them, and receiving endless signals, human imprints overriding nature. And in all that time they never chased a single live fish and gulped it down. Living in tanks they could never swim at full speed for very long in a straight line, they could never dive down and down and feel the pressure building just for the hell of it, nor did they dare let loose a real blast of sonar. Living in isolation for years, their natural dolphin ways were corrupted and distorted, their native memories blurred and forgotten. They had missed the simple but important things to a dolphin like tides and currents, the open sound of an endless sea with breakers plashing on a golden beach, and the wild sea tastes.
We had made them live in a world so phony that they had lost many of their skills to defend themselves, not only from predators, but also from diseases. And socially they were misfits. They had lost their place in the hierarchy of a pod and had no idea where to go for food, safety, and love. Indeed, because the pod is where a dolphin discovers its own identity, Joe and Rosie were nobody any more.
For all those years their lives revolved around the wishes of humans, their own lives becoming a humanized mess.
In un-training Joe and Rosie, I looked the other way whenever they sought my attention. If they wanted me to swim with them, I refused. If they leaped up and flipped, I turned my back. When they begged for food, I ignored them. Weaning them from dead fish was also a slow, gradual process.
I kept a couple of fishing lines in the sea nearby to catch snapper, yellow tail, sailor's choice, and grunts. I had constructed two wire cages three feet long on a side, which were placed in their pen just below a floating platform. When I caught a fish, I dropped it into the cage, where it stayed until it was time to feed the dolphins.
When I first started giving them live fish to eat, Joe and Rosie looked at me as if I had lost my mind. When I tossed the first live fish in the pen with them, the fish scooted away. Joe and Rosie were much too slow to catch it.
I remember the first time Joe caught a fish. He whirled and caught the snapper that I had tossed into the pen. He gave a powerful pump of his broad flukes, and spun with the fish, the water turning to froth. Then, suddenly, he broke to the surface with the fish in his mouth and brought the snapper over for me to see. He bobbed his head, tossed the fish around to position it head first, and then gulped it down. After that it was simple. Rosie caught on to his method, and they both spent a lot of time at the live-fish cage, watching their next meal, entranced.
We freeze-branded Joe and Rosie on both sides of their dorsal fins--Joe's mark an arrow, Rosie's a circle--so that they could be spotted easily after their release. We studied every angle of moving the dolphins from Florida to an island off the coast of Georgia, which had been chosen as the release site. The water around the island, though dark as coffee, was of excellent quality and teemed with fish. The transfer went well.
When Joe and Rosie were put in their new sea pen, they checked it out with great curiosity. Here, the currents got very strong when the tides changed. This caused problems setting it up, but it was a blessing for Joe and Rosie because it was like a treadmill. When the tides turned, the dolphins would spend several hours swimming against the current and getting into shape.
Fish were drawn to the pen as if to wrecks or reefs, and the dolphins feasted night and day. I know this because I would sleep-- humans, their own lives becoming a humanized mess.
In un-training Joe and Rosie, I looked the other way whenever they sought my attention. If they wanted me to swim with them, I refused. If they leaped up and flipped, I turned my back. When they begged for food, I ignored them. Weaning them from dead fish was also a slow, gradual process.
I kept a couple of fishing lines in the sea nearby to catch snapper, yellow tail, sailor's choice, and grunts. I had constructed two wire cages three feet long on a side, which were placed in their pen just below a floating platform. When I caught a fish, I dropped it into the cage, where it stayed until it was time to feed the dolphins.
When I first started giving them live fish to eat, Joe and Rosie looked at me as if I had lost my mind. When I tossed the first live fish in the pen with them, the fish scooted away. Joe and Rosie were much too slow to catch it.
I remember the first time Joe caught a fish. He whirled and caught the snapper that I had tossed into the pen. He gave a powerful pump of his broad flukes, and spun with the fish, the water turning to froth. Then, suddenly, he broke to the surface with the fish in his mouth and brought the snapper over for me to see. He bobbed his head, tossed the fish around to position it head first, and then gulped it down. After that it was simple. Rosie caught on to his method, and they both spent a lot of time at the live-fish cage, watching their next meal, entranced.
We freeze-branded Joe and Rosie on both sides of their dorsal fins--Joe's mark an arrow, Rosie's a circle--so that they could be spotted easily after their release. We studied every angle of moving the dolphins from Florida to an island off the coast of Georgia, which had been chosen as the release site. The water around the island, though dark as coffee, was of excellent quality and teemed with fish. The transfer went well.
When Joe and Rosie were put in their new sea pen, they checked it out with great curiosity. Here, the currents got very strong when the tides changed. This caused problems setting it up, but it was a blessing for Joe and Rosie because it was like a treadmill. When the tides turned, the dolphins would spend several hours swimming against the current and getting into shape.
Fish were drawn to the pen as if to wrecks or reefs, and the dolphins feasted night and day. I know this because I would sleep -- or try to sleep--on the platform right above them.
I could hear them, sometimes all night, chasing the schools of fish that came through. One night, as I listened to Joe and Rosie breathing, I heard another dolphin come to the holding pen, a dolphin much bigger than Joe and Rosie, with a darker, deeper sound that mixed with theirs, and I could feel an immense intelligence sweeping over me. Lying motionless in my tent, I tensed, waiting. But then the third dolphin snorted and, suddenly, was gone. Joe and Rosie got very excited, and all that night they swam back and forth, as if they were pacing. We were visited many nights after that by wild dolphins, especially at low tide.
Around noon on the day Joe and Rosie were to be released, the members of the project all gathered together--about fifteen of us. The National Geographic Society documented the event for television. We got in the water and untied the gate. It fell, and Joe and Rosie zoomed out and up the creek toward the interior of the island. We waited, all of us, and watched for twenty minutes as for the first time in years Joe and Rosie swam without constraint. They meandered around, came back to the pen, swam in one last time, and then left again--this time in the other direction, toward the sea.
Since their release, Joe and Rosie have been sighted more than a dozen times, and Rosie was recently seen with a young calf.
Photographs Dolphin Project Inc.
