Sea World – San Diego

On a visit to sea world, I got familiar with two new aquatic creatures; dolphins and killer whale. The attraction is all about sea specimens, as the title suggests. It is not that rest of creatures like seals, sharks, penguins, sting ray and colorful medley of other aquatic life; are any less important or uninteresting; but now it has been numerous times watching them, at different locales and exhibits. So we devoted much time on dolphins and killer whale during the recent visit and I will write about my adventure with the two.

An encounter with Dolphins.

A bottlenose specie of pacific-dolphin

See in the picture above, dolphin has teeth, eighty to hundred in number, in its big mouth.

Feeding dolphins

Dolphins love to eat fishes and squids. One can purchase, handful of fishes to feed the dolphin right here. Dolphins do not have a nose, hence no sense of smell; but have a blowhole to breathe. It was rather amusing to watch dolphins, periodically and rhythmically squirting water from the blowhole.
(In the picture see the blowhole of dolphin closest to you, mark the hole just behind the long snout, on top of the head.)

Dolphin show

First there is a dolphin encounter where you can touch, feel and feed the dolphins. Then there is a semi-circular stadium with dolphin pool in the center. It is a twenty minutes show. Dolphins by nature are friendly and playful too. Dolphin’s dorsal body is lighter shade of grey, while ventral is off white in color.

The welcome performance, dolphins swim speedily along the pool edge, splashing water with all might using flippers (forelimbs), and tail flukes (fins), covering the semicircular arch in few seconds. The first few rows of the stadium are meant to get wet; it is mentioned as well as forewarned before the show.

Show theme is a volunteer’s encounter with dolphins. The volunteer, fearing pretentiously, seamlessly blending her performance with dolphins. Dolphins exhibited few daring feats, with its flexible, frisky body; each time lifting the body above water; the best was a high jump across the rope, a very high indeed. Surprise in the end, the volunteer was none other than one of the dolphin trainers.

Dolphins are intelligent mammals, maybe easy to train. All dolphins were being rewarded with ample fish, after each accomplishment, I assume this is the way it is trained to perform and excel.

(travelogue to be continued for killer whale)