(Orange County Register, California)
Sound machine lets people 'talk' to dolphins, whales
By BRITTANY LEVINE
2011-04-15 08:19:09
Dave Anderson saw a humpback whale in the distance as he manned the wheel of his catamaran Wednesday morning.
"Is someone down in the X-Pod? Try pressing the humpback whale sounds," he called out to his passengers.
Jacklyn Thurston, 16, pressed a button on a sound machine in an underwater pod tricked out with a keyboard, microphone, digital sound sampler and an iPod filled with classical music.
The humpback whale cruised up alongside the boat, swimming from side to side for more than 10 minutes. The 50-foot whale splashed its tail, twirled in the air and flushed water out of its blowhole several times.
"Oh my God, he's practically onboard," said Thelma Hopkins of Aliso Viejo.
"I think we're lucky he has those sounds. I think that's keeping him here," Jeanne Fairweather said.
The sounds Fairweather was talking about are Anderson's newest addition to a 35-foot SeaRunner sailing catamaran he runs out of Dana Point Harbor on his Dolphin & Whale Safari rides.
FROM EYE POD TO X-POD
Anderson has long had an Eye Pod, a small underwater area where riders could come face to face with the dolphins that like to swim alongside the boat.
"I just kept seeing people making sounds, tapping on the glass and trying to communicate with the dolphins," Anderson said. "I wanted to create a means for them to really do that."
So he created another underwater pod dubbed the X-Pod for experimental interspecies communication. After playing around with the sounds, which are emitted through the water via a PA system designed for boats, riders are invited to fill out a log asking them what sounds they played and whether they noticed any animal reactions.
While Sebastian Surzyn, an 8-year-old from Bridgnorth, England, played the keyboard, his brother Joseph, 12, saw a dolphin come closer to the X-Pod glass.
"He looked like it made him roll over," Joseph Surzyn said.
MARINE MAMMAL RULES
Though the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits boaters from activities that cause an animal to change its normal behavior, Anderson said the humpback whale's behavior was natural and that he couldn't be sure the X-Pod sounds caused it to come close to the boat. He said the sounds won't harm marine life, as they are no louder than a boat's engine.
The National Marine Fisheries Service would have to show that the X-Pod sounds caused the behavior to prove the law is being violated, said Joe Cordaro, a wildlife biologist with the service.
"It's a fine line," he said.
"If they put that in writing that I'm violating the law, then I'll stop," Anderson said. "I love these animals. I'm not going to do anything that hurts them. All I'm trying to do is connect people to them."
Boaters without special sound equipment also got a show from a humpback whale Wednesday (see video). Humpbacks are rarely seen off Dana Point's coast, which often has blue and gray whales.
LIVE WEBCAST
In addition to debuting the X-Pod, Anderson flipped the switch on a camera aboard the boat that shows dolphin- and whale-watching trips live at whalewatchingtv.com. The idea is to let people who can't go aboard get a glimpse at what the water off Dana Point has to offer.
Once Anderson collects several months of logs from riders, he plans to examine the data to see if he can deduce any trends. The experiment is informal, as most scientific experiments don't take place in the wild but rather in controlled areas.
Anderson said the X-Pod won't be the last of his experiments.
"I'm going to keep trying to connect people to dolphins and whales," he said.
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