another animal, and all of a sudden present you with
the routine, the whole thing, and get all of it right
the first time. She would improvise during a perfor-
mance, and if you tossed her a fish, it became a per-
manent part of her act. She loved to perform.”
Squirt died seven weeks after Trouble, her seven-
year-old niece, succumbed to pneumonia. Worried
by that death, Cook went to Honduras himself for a
first-hand look at the Institute for Marine Sciences,
which is part of the St. Anthony’s Key dolphin swim
program. He found the conditions and care excellent,
he said, a few days before Squirt died, but added
that he personally would have kept the dolphins in
the same social groups they had at Ocean World, to
avoid bullying, rather than putting them all into the
same lagoon together. Two of the dolphins, Mabel
and Tiger, are reputedly bullies; Tiger, he said,
once killed a young dolphin in a fight over food after
being starved as punishment by then-Ocean World
trainer Russ Rector. After Squirt’s death, Cook spec-
ulated that both dead dolphins might have overheated
on the flight from Florida. Overheating, he said,
may not kill dolphins immediately, but can lead to
death later of problems such as cirosis of the liver
that “can look like ordinary conditions of age.”
Merlin, one of the first five dolphins
brought to The Mirage dolphinarium in Las Vegas,
died October 29 at age 30-plus. Veterinarian Lanny
Cornell said the death was due to old age. An
Atlantic bottlenose acquired in 1990 from the
Hawk’s Cay Resort and Marina in Duck Key,
Florida, Merlin sired four calves at The Mirage, of
whom one died in infancy; three remain there, along
with the other four dolphins who arrived with him.
A National Marine Fisheries Service task
force has voted 15-6 in favor of killing up to 40
California sea lions at the Ballard Locks in Seattle,
to protect threatened and endangered steelhead runs.
Protests are being coordinated by Mark Berman of
Earth Island Institute: 415-788-3666.
Indonesia on November 5 banned catch-
ing and selling the rare Napolean wrasse, a seven-
foot fish often caught through the use of poisons that
kill coral. Environment minister Sarwono
Kusumaatmadja said Indonesia would pursue a
CITES listing for the Napoleon wrasse next year.
A humpback whale freed on November
16 by British and Omani divers after spending five
days trapped in a fish net thanked them by leaping
“out of the water six or seven times in succession,
landing with thunderous splashes, as if to celebrate
its newfound freedom,” the team reported.
