Dolphin chatline ready for action...
KEY LARGO -- Any day now, Castaway the dolphin will deliver a calf in an idyllic lagoon birthing pen at the Marine Mammal Conservancy.
For dolphin caretakers, this is uncharted waters: Castaway is deaf.
''We asked ourselves: `How do we get the calf to speak when we have a deaf mother?''' said Robert Lingenfelser, president of the nonprofit conservancy at the end of a dirt road in Key Largo.
The brainstormed solution? The world's first dolphins' ``chat line.''
The calf will be able to hear and communicate with a pod of 10 other Atlantic bottlenose dolphins located three and a half miles away at Dolphins Plus, a research and interactive education facility.
Highly sophisticated underwater speakers and microphones have been installed at each site. The sounds are captured and processed using special software that allows high-speed data transmission through a telephone line.
''A calf is much like a child,'' said Jack Kassewitz, president of Miami-based SpeakDolphin.com. ``At first they babble, and that babble is shaped into language.''
Like humans, experts believe, dolphins need to be taught language. Castaway does not make many sounds, and when she does it is monotone -- much like a deaf person's voice, Lingenfelser said.
The chat line's sophisticated technology, unavailable just two years ago, can capture the broad frequency range of the offshore dolphin species, whose hearing is about eight times more acute than humans.
''In terms of dolphin communication, this is like discovering penicillin,'' Kassewitz said. ``In theory, we think a dolphin's name is a signature whistle, unique to each animal. This may teach us how it is developed.''
During Castaway's pregnancy, an hour CD of random sounds made by the Dolphins Plus pod is being played twice a day.
''It's definitely unusual for a calf in utero to be essentially in silence,'' said Jill Richardson, who runs research and education at Dolphins Plus. ``We are doing our best to hopefully stimulate pathways of communication. We have no clue if it is doing anything, but we didn't feel it would be detrimental.''
There are no deaf-dolphin manuals. Richardson and Lingenfelser said they know of only one other deaf dolphin ever held in captivity, and that was in the 1980s.
Dolphin sounds being played for calf.
Later, QD.
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