Clearwater Marine Aquarium!

Today I went with a fellow intern Dan, a trainer Barb, and a former intern and his wife to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium! This facility is primarily a rescue, rehab and release facility for stranded animals, but they do have a few dolphins that are unreleasable. Their most famous resident is Winter, a 5 year old dolphin who is missing her tail and has a special prosthetic tail! She was so adorable! :) Since she doesn't have a tail, she can't swim by moving her tail up and down in the water, so she has to move her peduncle from side to side. It makes her look like she is squiggling around in the water, but she is adorable. They also have an old female named Panama, who is deaf. Since most dolphins respond to a whistle as a bridge (see former posts hahaha), but Panama can't hear, they have to try to use other signals to let her know she did correct behaviors. It really is pretty interesting! The two males they have, Nicholas and Indy, are around 8 years old and they were also rescued. We got to watch one of their training sessions, and both of them were so fun! They did such fancy and elaborate jumps, with lots of twirls and tail moving! :) The aquarium also had a few river otters and we watched one of their sessions as well. Even though they are so cute, apparently otters are quite mean! hahaha One of the otters was named Cooper and his back legs were paralyzed. He was precious.

I wasn't able to take any pictures because right now they are filming a movie about Winter called Dolphins Tale! Today they were only filming scenes with extras, so I didn't get to see any of the famous people in the movie (Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Harry Connick Jr), bummer. It was cool though because the aquarium was closed to the public, so we got shown around the pools and sets by one of the head trainers. Everyone that worked there seemed really cool! After spending the day there, I kind of want to go into the part the the marine mammal field that involves rescuing and rehabbing injured animals. Even though it seems like it would be difficult, I feel like it would be really rewarding!

Winter without her prosthetic tail!



And here she is with her tail! So adorable. <3



P.S. Today was the first time I'd ever seen the Gulf of Mexico!