Return to Sea Life Park

Contrary to widely held popular belief, I am not an idiot. No, really. Okay, at least my mom thinks I’m not an idiot. That’s not the point. The point was, as I boarded the bus and headed off to Sea Life Park, I knew there was a good chance I would be hugely disappointed. My first trip to Sea Life Park the previous year had led me to write the beautiful and stirring ballad of Teddy and Miss Baha, two star-crossed dolphins.

(If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go back and read my blog about it in 2009, mahalo).

Here’s how I knew I wasn’t being an idiot, for one thing, I remembered my camera (unlike last year) and second, I actually showed up after the park opened this time instead of sitting outside on the park bench like a little lost orphan waiting for the gates to open (just like last year).

But, I did consider the possibility that perhaps Teddy and Miss Baha were no longer at Sea Life Park. Dolphins get sick or they get transferred to other facilities or die in freak gasoline fights. You know, whatevs. So I had braced myself for the possibility that maybe the ballad of Teddy and Miss Baha had come to its end.

Still, as I was pretty much the first person in line at Sea Life Park that morning and the staff were still opening up the park, I made a beeline for the arena where I’d last seen Teddy and Miss Baha.

The stadium was dark and forlorn. But there were three silent, gliding gray shapes in the tank (and those freaky renegade penguins on top of the enclosure. Didn’t they have cages of their own? Why weren’t they with the other penguins?). Jackpot. One of the dolphins had a long white belly and a pretty face: Miss Baha!

And then a gray face dipped down in front of me, eyeing me from the other side of the glass. The dolphin was carrying a rubber toy in its mouth. Teddy!

I know, I know. I was being ridiculous with my childlike wonderment. But really, it doesn’t take much to amuse me.

I sat there for awhile watching the dolphins play in the tank and I waited for someone to walk by. Actually, it took two someones to walk by, because the first two Sea Life Park employees didn’t know what I was talking about it when I politely inquired about the names of the dolphins and probably (and rightfully so) thought I was being a creepshow. But the third guy who walked by, I’m going to call him Shaun, was able to shed some light on the situation.

Shaun was in on the dolphin scene, but he wasn’t what I’d called overly friendly or verbose. “That’s Miss Baha,” he said nodding his head to the dolphin with the white stripe. Of course it was.

“What about the one with the toy?”

“That’s Teddy.” Shaun actually smiled, which just didn’t look right on his otherwise disdainful face. “He’s the star of the show.” Shaun tapped the glass and Teddy came over. “I guess he was really easy to train.” Shaun shrugged. “He jumps really high.”

“Who’s the third dolphin?” I hedged.

“Marnie.”

I wanted to ask what happened to the Big Kahuna, Miss Baha’s main squeeze, from the last time I was here. But really, I didn’t want to be creepy. The reason I remembered any of this was because I’d reread all my old blogs before I’d come back out to Hawaii.

So instead I made up my own reason for the disappearance of the Big Kahuna in the ever continuing saga of Teddy and Miss Baha:

One day, not longer after I’d flown back to Boston, the Big Kahuna caught the nomadic itch. He would gaze out over his tank and see the wild blue ocean and think to himself that that was where he truly belonged. So while the trainers were cleaning his tank, the Big Kahuna saw his move and made a break for it, he did a Free Willy style jump and landed in the ocean (mathematically and physically impossible from the actual cage at Sea Life Park, but whatever). There he frolicked in the big blue sea until he was eaten by a great white shark.

(This is how I like to imagine it happening, but of course, I took this pic at the dolphin show and just wanted to work this photo in.  Look at the photography prowess on this -- mid-air!)

Abandoned and forlorn, Miss Baha at first mourned the loss of her companion, the Big Kahuna. But then she gradually realized her own self-worth and decided she was better off without him anyway.

Enter Teddy, a rising star from the ranks of obscurity, who had pulled himself up the dolphin social hierarchy through hard work and dedication. At night, Teddy would practice leaping higher than the other dolphins so that one day, Miss Baha would notice him. And one day, she did.

And now, Teddy and Miss Baha were united, living in dolphin domiciliary bliss, except for that creepy third dolphin, Marnie…

I blinked. I really needed to stop imposing human characteristics on animals. So instead I asked Shaun about the penguins on top of the enclosure. “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “They’re just there.” Shaun was done with me then and I was about done with Shaun, so I took a few more pics of my favorite dolphins and headed out into the bright sunlight…

And now for a dose of snark lest you think Snarky went soft on you.

Enter Bridget. Bridget wasn’t her real name, but she looked like a Bridget. Actually, since the Sea Life Park employees don’t wear name tags, I suppose there was some slight chance her name was actually Bridget. Let’s just call her Bridget.

I met Bridget over at the tide pool touching area. She was the unlucky volunteer whose job it was to keep people from manhandling the marine life that had been put in the interactive tide pool touching area. It stood to reason that all of the inhabitants of this tank must have done something really, really bad because I can only imagine how hellish their life was being picked up, fondled in weird ways, and then dropped back into the tide pool when something more exciting came along.

Actually, I hung out over at the penguin exhibit watching Bridget surrounded by about twenty microhumans no larger than three feet tall and all dressed in bright purple t-shirts that read “Keiki Tours.” Hawaiians call their offspring, keiki, as if this somehow makes the concept of children more palatable. I don’t care what you call them, a group of children this numerous in quantity is terrifying. To Bridget’s credit, she kept up a smile as she gently pried starfish and sea cucumbers from the iron grasps of Keikis.

When the herd of keikis had migrated away to harass the monk seals (good luck with that, more on that in a bit), I headed over to say hello. I already knew what I was after. What I was after did not reside in the tide pool area but off to the right. As memory served me correctly, this was where they kept the baby sea turtles.

Sea Life Park raises about 500 baby sea turtles each year and 494 are released into the wild to help keep the population up in the ocean. 6 lucky turtles get to stay at Sea Life Park and live the life of luxury, basking in the sun in a clean enclosure and being hand fed lettuce, celery, and broccoli florets with no natural enemies other than keikis.

Baby sea turtles were adorable little buggers and I desperately wanted to pet one. The last time I went to Sea Life Park with a certain gentleman (oh don’t you worry, darling, I use that term lightly), we were THIS close to getting to pet one and then said gentleman told the volunteer they looked tasty. She had put the turtle away after that comment.

(Bridget and baby sea turtle)

Bridget and I started talking sea turtles and yes, she let me pet one. It wasn’t really that exciting, but the turtle made this adorable little “whoosh” sound through his nose holes. Bridget was super excited about being a volunteer at Sea Life Park and was even more excited to talk to someone over three feet tall that didn’t pick their nose (that’s what she thought). In me she found an eager listener about anything marine oriented. Bring on the geek under the sea knowledge.

I don’t remember how we got onto the subject of penguins, but we did and I told Bridget that the penguins at Sea Life Park looked a whole lot happier than the ones back home in Boston at the New England Aquarium. Our own penguins spent a lot of time standing on rocks and making a whole lot of noise. Sea Life Park penguins, as far as I could tell, spent a lot of time floating in their little moat looking pleased with themselves.

“Oh no,” Bridget said. “They can actually get very aggressive with one another. They flippers are well-designed for not only swimming, but fighting.”

Ohhhhhh Bridget, I thought. A little knowledge can be a terrible thing. What I wanted to say to Bridget was, “you mean the penguins can bi**hslap one another with their flippers?”

Instead I said, “that’s really interesting. Do you mean they hit each other with their flippers when they’re irritated?”

“Or scared or feeling threatened. Sometimes, they’ll even hit one of the trainers if they think they’re not being fed fast enough.” Bridget smiled winsomely.

This is a funnier image still, a penguin bi**hslapping a trainer. It’s even more fun when dialogue is added. Penguin to trainer: “hurry up, you mammalian infidel! Bring me my cold filet o’ fish or I shall strike you again!” For some reason, the penguin has a British Monty Pythonish accent.

“Actually, it’s not just penguins either, sea lions have been known to fight with their flippers as well,” Bridget adds helpfully. “Although, as you can imagine, that must hurt a lot more.”

So the bottom line, Bridgey, is that what penguins and sea lions share in common, other than a marine habitat, is the penchant for bi**chslapping each other?

And then I wondered, well what about interspecies bi**chslapping? A penguin might hit a trainer, but would a penguin, if given the opportunity, bi**chslap a sea lion? I’d like to meet the penguin that would try and pull that off.

Instead I said, “that’s fascinating. Tell me about the Monk seals.”

“Oh, the monk seals,” Bridget said with a knowing look. “They’re really, really lazy. It’s hard to get them to do anything. In fact, the trainers will be feeding our Monks in about twenty minutes. We don’t post that as an activity because you can see for yourself if you want that they don’t do anything for their fish.”

I thanked Bridget for her time (and the wonderfully fun mental image of interspecies bi**chslapping) and decided to see it for myself.

Of course, Bridget was right. While other animals had to turn around in circles or jump out of the water or hit a ball for their fish (dolphins)

...or clap their flippers together and bark (sea lions)

...or look adorable and swim over with their mouths open (sea turtles)

or sandwich the divers (sting rays)

monk seals just laid there like lumps and opened their mouths. The trainer would aim the fish into their mouths. Occasionally, the trainer would miss and the fish would miss the mouth and the monk seal would make a face at the trainer.

(Monk seal resting pose)

(Cool, so I'll just lie here and you'll offer me fish)

 

(Fish into mouth.  Monk doesn't even raise head)

 

Although watching indifferent monk seals and all was all very well and good, at this point, Sea Life had started to fill up with more and more keikis, so I swung by the dolphin tank once more, said good bye to Teddy and Miss Baha, and then headed off to Makapu’u for some beach time.

(Snarky here, over and out)