A Day in the Life In the Aegean Sea, near Izmir on the coast of Turkey, bottlenose dolphins frolic. A female dolphin drapes a frond of brown seaweed over her tail. She darts away and three dolphin playmates give chase. When she drops her toy, a companion snatches it up and the chase begins anew. Part dress-up, part tag, the game delights all the dolphins involved. Cruising at a steady 6 kilometers per hour,
a male dolphin surfaces to breathe. Dipping below the waves, he echolocates, sending out a burst of sounds too rapid for human ears to separate. T e sounds bounce off living things and other objects and then return as a detailed sonar image, enabling the dolphin to “see” the surrounding area—anchovies ahead! T e male zooms toward the fi sh, liſt s his
tail into the air and slaps it down. T e impact produces a cloud of bubbles, confusing the anchovies so they’re easier to catch and gobble up. T is hunting technique is named “kerplunking” aſt er the noise it makes. Nearby, a mother dolphin demonstrates a
diff erent hunting method. Protecting her beak with a freshly plucked sea sponge, she plows a furrow in the seafl oor, searching for fi sh that live there. Her calf copies her, and they catch and share a meal. Aſt er eating, they join other dolphins in a series of acrobatic leaps above the sparkling turquoise waves. T ere’s rarely a dull moment in the life of
wild dolphins. Playing, hunting, socializing with pod members, and caring for off spring keeps them quite busy.
Life Inland In the mountain town of Hisarönü, three hundred and fi ſt y kilometers away, two male dolphins languish. Tom and Misha were captured, for public display, four years earlier. T ey came from the same part of the Aegean Sea that the wild dolphin pod calls home. Yet the similarities to their wild cousins end there. Wild dolphins are nomads, swimming as far
as 64 kilometers a day in search of fi sh. Tom and Misha circle a cramped concrete pool just 12 meters wide and 17 meters long. T e pool isn’t clean. Its fl oor is carpeted with uneaten fi sh and dolphin feces. T e water is teeming with bacteria—11 times more bacteria than permitted in human swimming pools. T ese dolphins are sick and underweight, their ribs showing through their blubber. Tom and Misha have forgotten how to hunt
for themselves. T ey eat frozen mackerel fed to them by their trainers on a strict schedule. T ey’ve stopped echolocating because they don’t need to hunt, and there’s nothing new to investigate in their small tank. Most of their social contact is with their human trainers and the tourists who are willing to pay $50 each to enter the tank and swim with the dolphins. Tom and Misha can no longer survive in the
wild, but they won’t survive in captivity much longer, either.
While captive, Tom and Misha lived in a small concrete tank. They ate frozen fi sh provided by their trainer.
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