{"id":16211,"date":"2013-10-31T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T07:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=16211"},"modified":"2013-10-31T00:01:14","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T07:01:14","slug":"i-cant-believe-i-got-in-the-water-with-that-1400-pound-whale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/i-cant-believe-i-got-in-the-water-with-that-1400-pound-whale\/","title":{"rendered":"I Can’t Believe I Got in the Water With That 1400-Pound Whale"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"17-foot<\/a>
Koko, the 17-foot whale, swam within inches of me in the small tank at Marine World-Africa USA. It was all I could do to hold still and not kick him. San Francisco Chronicle photo by John O’Hara<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Last weekend I watched the trailer for the CNN documentary<\/a> \u201cBlackfish\u201d and saw a Sea World trainer attacked and pulled underwater by an out-of-control killer whale. I had to wonder — could that have been me?<\/p>\n

\"3<\/a>
When I asked to meet these dolphins, I didn’t know about their 1400-pound tank mate. SF Chronicle photo by John O’Hara<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Blackfish” traces the deadly history of\u00a0 killer whales at places like Sea World, and watching that footage brought back memories of\u00a0 the day I found myself in a tank of water with a killer whale cousin — a 1400-pound pilot whale named Koko.<\/p>\n

It was 1979. I was young and fearless.<\/p>\n

And like a lot of people, I entertained some big fat romantic notions about the soulfulness of dolphins. (Anybody remember the 1960s TV show \u201cFlipper?\u201d) I wanted to meet one of those “highly evolved” animals personally. I wanted to get in the water with one, chat with one.<\/p>\n

I was a staffer at the San Francisco Chronicle at the time, so all I had to do to get myself face-to-face with a dolphin was pick up the phone, call Marine World-Africa USA in nearby Redwood City — and ask.<\/p>\n

Which I did.<\/p>\n

They said yes.<\/p>\n

What they didn\u2019t say was that there would be a whale in the tank. And that their dolphins weren\u2019t exactly Flipper.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My Day With the Dolphins<\/h4>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall, The San Francisco Chronicle, May 3, 1979<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you scared?\u201d one of the dolphin trainers had asked while I was still on dry land.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe you\u2019re just excited. Sometimes it feels the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, I was scared. What had promised to be a blithe underwater romp with a couple of salt water puppy dogs had become an adventure of the first order.<\/p>\n

Earlier I had telephoned Marine World-Africa USA in Redwood City and asked if I might take a swim with one of their dolphins, something I had yearned to do for years.<\/p>\n

My request had been granted \u2013 all too readily, it now seemed \u2013 and on this cold, rainy spring morning, I found myself paddling timidly around a tank of 68-degree water, with two dolphins taking what I considered to be not very genteel nibbles at my hand. On the other side of the tank<\/p>\n

\"Reporter<\/a>
Ungainly in a borrowed wetsuit. San Francisco Chronicle photo by John O’Hara<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

lurked 1400 pounds of flesh, bone and blubber in the form of a pilot whale named Koko. I was ungainly in borrowed wet suit, fins and weight belt, and a tube ran from my mouth to a tank of air on the deck.<\/p>\n

I had come here to find out if dolphins were the bright, gentle creatures portrayed by the \u201cFlipper\u201d TV series of the \u201960s or whether possibly there was an \u201calien intelligence\u201d at work in them, a mind equal to or superior to that of my own species.<\/p>\n

But things were not turning out as I had expected. First of all, there was the whale in the tank.<\/p>\n

And secondly \u2013 I was quickly finding out \u2013 dolphins are not exactly pussycats. \u201cWe may have to take you out after about five minutes,\u201d Marine World officials had warned. \u201cThey don\u2019t mean to hurt you, but they play rough,\u201d<\/p>\n

There were three bottle-nosed dolphins \u2013 weighing a total of 975 pounds \u2013 in this tank, along with Koko, who measured 16 \u00be feet, head to flukes. \u201cAn animated building,\u201d as Don Reed, the head diver at Marine World, likes to call him. But Koko was shy, I was promised, \u201cHe\u2019ll stay on the other side of the tank.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reed, who is a professional scuba diver, not a trainer, was in the water with me as my guide. Rarely do Marine World\u2019s dolphin trainers condescend to go into the dolphins\u2019 own watery environment, so only the divers, the \u201cunderwater janitors\u201d who clean the tanks, feed the sharks and catch the animals when they\u2019re in need of medical attention, really know what the dolphins are like underwater.<\/p>\n

The Dolphins Check Me Out<\/h5>\n

Spock and his mate, Shiloh, were the first to investigate the clumsy creature in the borrowed wet suit who had ventured into their tank that morning. Together they glided past me, gracefully and so much in unison that their right eyes, gazing into mine, could have belonged to the same animal.<\/p>\n

They swam around and around, opening their mouths to show me their teeth as they passed. I was being hazed, I thought. They were trying to find out how much I could take.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they nudge you, don\u2019t nudge them back,\u201d Reed had cautioned. They would think I was playing and get rough with me.<\/p>\n

So I kept my arms close to my body, tried not to thrash around and listened for the dolphin sounds I had read about.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, there was a faint high-pitched squeal and an equally faint series of clicks, like a clock ticking double-time. The dolphins, I was certain were carrying on a conversation. I was also certain that the conversation was not so much with me, as I had hoped, as it was about me.<\/p>\n

\"Reporter<\/a>
Dodging two dolphins and a wrecker’s ball. San Francisco Chronicle photo by John O’Hara<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A Very Big Whale<\/h5>\n

Reed pointed over my shoulder, and there, not two feet away, was Koko. His head was black, massive and blunt, and it looked for all the world like a wrecker\u2019s ball. He was coming toward me.<\/p>\n

I considered my options. I could make a beeline for the surface, flail around there and make myself a really appealing target for Koko and his pals. Or I could do as I had been instructed. Breathe deeply. Relax. Pretend that I was in my own bathtub and that Koko was just a bar of Ivory soap floating my way.<\/p>\n

That is what I did. Koko\u2019s head slid past me; his eye, about the size of a silver dollar, met mine. Then there was a long, sleek expanse of black.<\/p>\n

It had become clear that Koko meant me no harm, but could his head, which was now 15 feet away, know where his flukes were? Would I be able to keep my feet under control?\u00a0 I had been told not to pet Koko. If I kicked him what would he do?<\/p>\n

I breathed and relaxed some more. Koko\u2019s flukes made a deft flip, missing my wayward fins by a mere 18 inches and he was gone.<\/p>\n

I turned and looked toward Reed\u2019s comforting presence and realized how partial I was to my own species.<\/p>\n

Spock came very close. He put his beak to my face mask, opened his mouth and bleated like a kitten.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you like me?\u201d I wondered. \u201cI like you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spock and I had been introduced earlier by Deirdre Ballou, one of the trainers, as she and I<\/p>\n

\"Marine<\/a>
I’m on the left with the wet suit and reporter’s notebook. That’s Spock and Marine World trainer Deirdre Ballou, who does not get in the water with the dolphins. Marine World photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

stood together on the deck. Spock swam up to her, propped his chin, if you can call it that, on the deck at her feet and smiled the perennial bottle-nosed dolphin smile.<\/p>\n

Then he turned his head my way and opened his mouth, revealing neat rows of pointed teeth.<\/p>\n

Spock \u201cused to be a real shy little fellow. Now he\u2019s the old-timer,\u201d Ballou said fondly, putting her hand around his jaw and stroking his gums with her thumb. \u201cDo you want to pet him? It\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure Spock and I knew each other well enough for that. He might appreciate a few polite preliminaries. And he did have teeth.<\/p>\n

Cautiously, I rubbed the top of his head. His skin was firm and slippery, and felt, more than anything else, like the surface of a wet eggplant.<\/p>\n

Those Sensual, Sexual Dolphins<\/h5>\n

Now, in the water, Spock rolled over and nudged me gently. I put out my elbow \u2013 the only part of my body not covered by coarse wet suit material \u2013 and stroked him with it as he glided by. He swam by again and again, turning his belly up and allowing me to reach out and touch him.<\/p>\n

Dolphins, I had been warned, are very tactile \u2013 sexual, to be precise \u2013 and, according to Reed, humans often become the object of their highly active libidos. When Reed is cleaning the dolphin tank, the dolphins, \u201cmales and females, will come over and make themselves happy with you,\u201d he said. \u201cYou just sort of put up with it\u201d and keep on working.<\/p>\n

But Reed had decided that such goings on were too \u201cgross\u201d and much too dangerous for the likes of me. If a dolphin \u201cgets really aroused,\u201d he said, \u201che doesn\u2019t care. He has no inhibitions. He\u2019ll roll you around the tank like a pencil.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, when Reed saw Spock nudging my knees with his beak, he signaled me to get out of the tank.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou did good,\u201d Reed said to me afterwards. But did they like me, I wanted to know, and I<\/p>\n

\"Barbara<\/a>
I got what I asked for: Face time with a dolphin. San Francisco Chronicle photo by John O’Hara<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

telephoned Reed the next day to find out.<\/p>\n

He was polite. \u201cI think so. Otherwise they would have been a little rougher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, \u201cthey were giving a little bit of open mouth action, which means \u2018hands off, we don\u2019t know each other.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t expect any of the animals in that tank to let you be intimate with them, hug them, after just a few hours\u2019 acquaintance, he said. It takes a long time to get to know a dolphin.<\/p>\n

Text and photos \u00a9 1979 The San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>, reprinted by permission<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Marine World-Africa USA<\/a> moved to Vallejo, Calif., in the ’80s and is now Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Today, organizations like PETA<\/a> insist that the practice of allowing the public to swim with dolphins is inhumane and dangerous to dolphins and humans alike.<\/em><\/p>\n

Don Reed\u00a0went on to write books about his years as a diver.<\/em>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

John O’Hara, a Chronicle staff photographer at the time of this story, is now an equestrian photographer. An experienced scuba diver, he was in the water taking the photos you see here. “Diving with the dolphins was fun,” he emailed recently. But the Marine World staff “made me get out of the water when they started to pass closer and closer, and at what seemed to be the speed of light.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Marine<\/a><\/p>\n

Last weekend I watched the CNN documentary \u201cBlackfish\u201d and saw a Sea World trainer attacked and pulled underwater by an out-of-control killer whale. I had to wonder — could that have been me? “Blackfish” traces the deadly history of killer whales at places like Sea World, and it brought back memories of the day I found myself in a tank of water with a 1400-pound pilot whale named Koko. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1116,1117,34,1118,1119,88,82],"class_list":["post-16211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","tag-adventure","tag-dolphins","tag-dont-miss","tag-killer-whales","tag-marine-world-africa-usa","tag-nature","tag-on-the-funny-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}