Winter the dolphin today, has signed a movie deal, well not Winter, but the Clearwater Marine Aquarium and David Yates, Winter’s handler, signed the deal.

Winter story is very inspirational and I have blogged about Winter before.  On our old blog we wrote  5 – 6 post about Winter’s plight, from finding Winter, looking for a prosthetic tail, and Winter finding a prosthetic tail. There were a lot of stories on the news about how Winter inspired human amputees, including our wounded soldiers coming back from the Middle East.  So I can understand how Hollywood would want to tell this story. Hopefully they won’t ruin it.

To read the details of the movie deal, < Read Story >

Do you think  “Winter the Dolphin” story is worthy of a movie deal? It looks like the the movie company is going to change the story of Winter, boy finds dolphin,  boy gets winter prosthetic tail, and some sort of happy ending. How would you write Winter’s story?
God Bless,
John

Cruise Season is almost here and the question we always hear is “how far is the cruise port of Georgetown to the Swim with Dolphin Grand Cayman facility?” Well, here is a google map to show you how close the facility is, only 8 miles. This will be about a $24 US dollar taxi ride. They will take US dollars or Cayman dollars.

View Grand Cayman in a larger map

Grand Cayman is one of our more popular dolphin programs we offer. Has anyone been to Grand Cayman? What did you think about the Island? Any travel advice you might have?
God Bless,
John

When you see wild dolphin swimming around, are they are they really protected from the tuna nets? Also, how do we know that the tuna we eat is really dolphin safe, meaning that we are not eating Dolphin as well as tuna. Believe it or not, school children from Texas are helping in this cause.

These students are purchasing cans of tuna from local area supermarkets and getting the tuna tested for the meat content within the can. They are testing the meat to be 100% tuna.  I read this information from an article I read online,  to read more on this story, go to….  < READ MORE >

If you read the article I just mentioned, you will see how these students are involved in this project. My biggest concerns, why aren’t others that are concern about Tuna Safe Labeling more involved, environmental groups or concern citizens? I know what these school children are doing is great but will this testing continue after the students are bored with it.

Also, I looked on Wikipedia about the labeling for Dolphin Safe. I never knew there are different labels and requirements for each label.  Here is what I found…

There are various dolphin safe labels used for canned tuna to show that the fish has been caught without harming or killing dolphins. However, because there are various labels used, there are also various different restrictions imposed on the capture of tuna in order for it to deserve the related dolphin safe label, some labels imposing stricter requirements than others.  < READ MORE >

What do you think about dolphin safe labeling. Do you think it does any good?
God Bless,
John

Kitana, a 2 year old female dolphin, is being rehabilited at Gulf World marine park. They found Kitana off the shore and she was very sickly. Now she is living the good life for now at the park, eating and playing. She is getting healthy quickly.  The reason I say for now, because the last dolphin at Gulf World that was nursed to health and set free got ate by Sharks almost immediately after the release.

The protocol by the Marine Fishery Act requires animals to be set free after they are healthy enough.

You need to see this news clip and give me your opinion < See Video >…

Interesting isn’t it.  Should Kitana be released?
God Bless,
John

Who would think a Dolphin called Beggar the Dolphin would be so famous but this dolphin is. He lives off the coast of Sarasota and he made the news because of his begging for food. This dolphin swims up to boats in the bay and opens his mouth next to the fishing boats and begs for food.

It seems like a lot of boaters are feeding him. If you do a search on Youtube, and type Beggar the Dolphin or Begger the Dolphin, you will find a lot of homemade videos of people feeding this dolphin.

To see a news report on this dolphin, < click Here >.

What do you think, should people be allowed to feed wild dolphins?
God Bless,
John

Hi All,

We have added a cool dolphin widget on our fun page.  If you like widgets, you might want to add this to your website, myspace, or other web related sites you have. It is a free download.

Click here to view this Dolphin Widget.

Do you know of any other dolphin animations, games, puzzles, that are cool and that I should know about? I would love to share it to with our readers.
God Bless,
John

Hi All,

We have added a new story about different types of dolphins.  It is hard to believe that are so many species of dolphins but there are.  We highlighted and wrote about the bottlenose dolphin, Orcas, and Spotted Dolphins.

The story starts with…..

The illustrious creatures of the sea, mythical in appearance, how did these creatures come to be and how many different types does Mother Nature possess. Just how many kinds of dolphins are there? READ MORE>>

Did we miss any dolphin species in our story? Can anyone add to the story on the type of dolphins we did not write about?
I hope to hear from you.
God bless,
John
Swim with the Dolphins

Hi All,

I read this online article about Tuxuxi Dolphins, from South America, have been spotted killing their young. I really have a hard time time to believe this report.

Here is the beginning of the BBC article.

It is the first record of these dolphins attempting infanticide. Although common in many mammal species, infanticide is rarely recorded among cetaceans, the group of animals that includes whales and dolphins. < Read More >

If you read the article, to me, it seemed this researcher, only spotted a isolated incident and there was no proof of the baby dolphin dying.  But what do you think? Do you think a dolphin pod could kill its young?
God Bless,
John

Hi there,

One of my MYSPACE friends sent me this story of how these wild dolphins off the coast of Somolia protected this Cargo ship. You have to read this story, pretty cool.

<Read Story of Dolphins Protecting a Ship>

Here is a photo from the story.

What do you think of this story?
God Bless,
John

Hi All,

I plan to add this series of information I have had for while and bring it back out and post in the Dolphin World blog for you to know. I hate for this information to disappear into cyberspace and I know the blog will hold the information better.

Dolphin Scientific Classification

A. Order–Cetacea.

The scientific order Cetacea includes all whales. This order is further divided into three suborders.

1. Odontoceti (toothed whales).
The toothed whales include dolphins, porpoises, beluga whales, beaked whales, and sperm whales.

2. Mysticeti (baleen whales).
The baleen whales include blue whales, gray whales, and right whales.

3. Archaeoceti.
The archaeocetes are an extinct group of whales, of which only fossils remain (Barnes, 1990).

B. Family–Delphinidae.
Dolphins and their immediate kin are included in the scientific family Delphinidae. This family is represented by about 30 species, including common dolphins, pilot whales, killer whales, and false killer whales.

C. Genus, species–Tursiops truncatus.
Although biochemical evidence supports the existence of several geographical races, most scientists currently recognize only one species of bottlenose dolphin (Klinowska, 1991).

I hope we did not miss anything. Does anyone out there have something add to this list or any comments?
God Bless,
John