The Life Of A Dolphin Trainer

The dark blue water in the pool ripples with movement. Suddenly five pacific white sided dolphins burst from the water and majestically soar 30 feet into the sky. As the 300 pound marine mammals crash back into the pool a gigantic splash of water splatters over the rail and lands at the feet of a five year old girl seated in the front row. The pint sized fan claps, raises her arms enthusiastically and laughs as the crowd erupts in applause.

As the girl's family leave the Oceanarium, still smiling and talking about the show, Jessica Whiton, an animal trainer at the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, reaches for a shovel and heads to the seal habitat to shovel feces out of a drain.

Welcome to the world of dolphin training.

There are many misconceptions about what dolphin trainers really do. As glamorous as the job may appear, all play and no work is not accepted in this field.

"Most people that come to the shows think that all we do is do shows and play with the dolphins all day," said Jennifer McGee, lead keeper at the Brookfield Zoo, located on the outskirts of Chicago. "I wish that were true."

The daily schedule of a dolphin trainer is so hectic it would make the average C.E.O. blush. For every minute spent working with the animals, trainers spend even more time cleaning, preparing food, and completing extensive record keeping. The trainers at the Shedd Aquarium are scheduled to work 11-hour days, but Whiton said the trainers usually start early and stay late. "Every minute of the day is packed with something," said Whiton, relaxing for a moment in her wet suit. "Sometimes you can't fit it all in, but somebody else will chip in and help you out."

Dolphin trainers, who are actually called animal trainers (or keepers) by their facilities, not only work with dolphins but also whales, sea otters, river otters, penguins, seals, sea lions, and walrus. "I work with almost all of the animals in the Oceanarium," Whiton adds, "some of the trainers here are even working with sharks."

In recent years the Shedd Aquarium has been educating the public by offering many behind-the-scenes tours which allow the public to meet animal trainers and learn firsthand what goes on when the show is over. "They want to see what we do on the inside," said Whiton. "The Shedd has done a really good job of opening things up. In the A.R.C. Center (A Resource for the Curious) we get to meet the public and answer questions like 'don't you smell like fish every night?' Or, 'when you go out, can you eat sushi?'" Whiton says, laughing. "The thing that really interests people is 'how do you train?'"

Visitors to the Shedd have been surprised to learn that before trainers can work with the animals, they spend hours sorting and cleaning the fish the animals will eat that day. Then the trainers clean the kitchens the food is prepared in, clean the habitats the animals live in, and clean the decks some animals sleep on. Several times each day trainers will put on scuba gear and dive to scrub algae from the giant tanks. The emphasis is clearly on keeping the facilities clean and safe for the animals.

"There is definitely a lot of cleaning, and a lot of food prep," said Whiton. "We sort through 600 pounds of fish per day."

The marine mammals at the Brookfield Zoo also consume an equally large amount of fish each day. Every single fish is carefully inspected. "We get the fish from the same places restaurants buy their fish from," said Jennifer McGee. "If the fish is not human quality consumption, or if there is even a cut or break in the skin or the eye looks bloody, we throw it out because it's just not worth the risk to the animal."

"We even use a medical scrub before we handle the animals food or before we go interact with them," explained McGee. "We also have black foot baths we step in that are a disinfectant so we do not track germs into the animal's areas."

Eventually, all of the hours spent cleaning and keeping records give way to the fun stuff, training. Just don't call them tricks.

"We call them behaviors because 'tricks' to us implies magic tricks where there is some kind of fancy thing going on," said McGee. "Basically we are just training natural behaviors and asking the animals to do it on specific hand signals."

Ever wonder how a trainer gets a dolphin to leap 30 feet in the air on command?

The trainers use a theory from psychology called Operant Conditioning. Operant Conditioning teaches that behavior can be influenced through the use of positive reinforcement.

"What positive reinforcement means is that if we see a behavior that we like from the animal, we reinforce it or reward it," said McGee. "We can reward a dolphin with toys, fish, or ice cubes. Or we may spray some fresh water in their mouths to tickle their tongue. Anything that the dolphin enjoys we can use to reward them when they have done a behavior correctly. If an animal is reinforced for a behavior it is going to do it more often."

It's not a far leap to go from rewarding a dolphin for desired natural behaviors to teaching them to do it on command. The first step is to condition the animal to a bridge, which is something that spans the gap of time between when an animal does a correct behavior and when they are reinforced.

"The whistle is the main bridge we use because they are very precise and timing is key when it comes to training" said the Shedd's Whiton. "We will blow the whistle, give them a fish, blow the whistle, give them a fish. Eventually they will associate the whistle with meaning 'fish' or something positive. That is how the animal knows, 'oh, I heard the whistle, that means I get a fish.' Eventually the whistle becomes reinforcing."

The same positive reinforcement method can be used to train any animal, from a whale, to a walrus, to a dog. But there is one special thing a dolphin can do that the other animals can't, and that is fly!

"If I want to train one of our dolphins to do a high jump, we have a buoy come down and touch the water," said Brookfield's McGee. "The dolphins are pretty curious, so they will swim over and touch it. That is when I blow a whistle to tell the dolphins they have done the correct behavior, and they will go, 'oh, ok,' and come back and get a reward. Then slowly, over time, I will raise the height of the ball so if they want to touch the ball again they have to come up out of the water a little bit. They are going to come up a little more until you have them jumping high out of the water."

Once the animals have the desired behavior learned, the trainers start to teach hand signals, or targets.

"For a hand target you might see us hold our hand up and the dolphins or beluga whales will come up and touch our hand," said Whiton. "We will take our hand and touch them on the tip of the rostrum (nose), blow the whistle, and give them a fish. We do it over and over again until eventually instead of touching them we hold our hand just an inch or two above and they think 'well, she's not blowing the whistle, I must need to touch.' Eventually they make the breakthrough where they'll come to you and touch. Then you blow the whistle and give them lots of fish and they learn exactly what you want. From there you can get them to do jumps or corkscrews. Targeting is the key, you can shape any behavior with targeting."

Depending on how complicated a behavior is, some behaviors can be taught in as little as one session, or it could take years.

But not all of the time trainers spend with the animals is spent teaching exciting things like jumps and corkscrews. "Not even half of the training we do is for stuff that you will see in a show," said McGee. Most of the training is teaching animals to participate in their own care, which includes being trained to give voluntary blood samples, x-rays, and weight measurements, among others.

Sometimes, as the trainers have learned, the tables are turned and the trainers are the ones getting schooled.

"These creatures are very observant and they understand us," said Dr. George Rabb, director of the Brookfield Zoo. "Sometimes you wonder, 'who's training whom?' The animal will try to manipulate you. They're capable of lying to us and will try all kinds of things to get your attention. It's not as one sided as one would think."

Trainers at the Shedd are quite familiar with how animals can manipulate their trainers.

"We have one whale named Naya who loves to have her tongue scratched," said Whiton. "Naya knows that if she sits next to the pool and squeaks and squawks and sits there looking cute with her mouth open somebody will eventually come scratch her tongue. She will be completely quiet until somebody comes in and then it's, 'Oh, you're here! Hello! I'm over here! I'm cute, come scratch my tongue!'"

While spending time with the animals is the main appeal of the job, one drawback to dolphin training is that it doesn't pay as much as most people would expect. In fact, it doesn't pay much at all. The seemingly never ending supply of people who are willing to become animal trainers keeps the pay low, even for trainers who have been in the industry for years.

"I started out at minimum wage with no benefits, and that was with a college degree," lamented McGee. "The salary I am making now after doing this for ten years is about the same amount my best friend was making her first year out of college as a nurse. You have to do it for love and not money."

Despite the low pay, trainers agree it is the opportunity to work with the animals that is the best part of the job. "Being in the water with the animals in front of 2,000 people, that's the most glamorous part," said McGee.

"Having your friends and family come to see you with the dolphins is the most glamorous," echoed Whiton.

There also seems to be a universal agreement on the worst part of animal training. "Cleaning walrus fecal matter off the deck," McGee says laughing.

"Standing at the bottom of the seal pool shoveling feces out of the drain," said Whiton. "Or walking upstairs covered in penguin guano. Anything about feces, actually," she adds, chuckling.

Sometimes trainers inadvertently take their jobs home with them. "You go out to dinner and your have fish scales stuck to your arm and you smell like penguin guano," said Whiton. "It never impresses people too much."

The job can also mean working long hours, especially during the summer peak tourist season. But summer isn't the only time trainers work long hours. When an animal is sick or pregnant, trainers drop everything to be by their side.

"If your kid was sick you wouldn't go home and sit in front of the TV and watch sports," said Whiton. "You want to be here. There are times like that that I have worked 80, 90, or 100 hour weeks."

"You spend so much time with these animals they are like part of your family," said McGee. "We would all give up almost anything at the drop of a hat if we needed to for one of them. We all care about them so much. We wouldn't be doing it if we didn't."

In the end, are the long hours, low pay, loads of paperwork, and hours of cleaning worth it to be able to work with the animals every day?

You bet.

"It's a great job, I love it," said the Shedd's Whiton. "It's fun. It's emotional. It's long hours and lot's of great people and really great animals. It's physically straining. We get weird rashes and cracks in our fingers that just keep bleeding. There are a lot of good times, and every once in a while a couple of hard times. It's just a job, but you love it. We don't get paid very much and we're wet and we stink, but we're still here and we do it because we love it."





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