An excellent story over at The Guardian about dolphin intelligence. At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean. Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

I’ve recently been given the thumbs by PADI up to teach a course that I authored called the Sea Lion Awareness Specialty Diver.

The course consists of an educational session where we’ll discuss the Pinniped family of sea mammals before going in-depth into the life of the California Sea Lion. The open water component of the course includes 2 dives at Santa Barbara Island which hosts on of the largest sea lion rookeries in the Southern California area. During our dives we’ll observe and interact with the magnificent and playful sea lions and discuss the behaviors we’ve observed.

The first (of many) Sea Lion Awareness courses will be conducted on June 15th on the Encore. We’re scheduled to go to the sea lion rookery on Santa Barbara Island so we should see more than our fair share of the playful pups.

Cost is $50 plus the cost of the boat spot on the Encore ($105).

If you have an interest, please contact Ocean Adventures Dive Co. (310-578-9391) and tell them you would like to sign up for the Sea Lion Awareness course with me.

According to Reuters, Canadian scientists have concluded that 90% of the most commonly consumed fish by humans are gone. Overfishing has driven populations almost to extinction and the fish that remain tend to be smaller than they were in the 1950′s.