Papa Mike’s Palau Blog

Roxie and her friend exchange leaves for sardines.

Greetings from Palau,

Hopefully along with my posts you are now viewing pictures that have been uploaded to the blog. Special thanks go out to Susan over at the Visitors Authority who helped show me how to load the pictures and posted the picture of the traditional bai or men’s meeting place that graces this page.

I would like to remind everyone that the blog is interactive, that is to say you are free to respond to anything posted, just click on the comments section at the bottom of each entry if you have any questions or comments to the author, besides it reinforces to me the fact that there is someone out there reading these posts!

Papa Mike

Flipper Should Have Had It So Good!

I must confess I have a crush on Roxy. After all she did perform flips for me when I rubbed her belly, and I’m such a sucker for a girl that does flips. She has only one drawback—she has sardine breath.

Roxy is one of eight dolphins that put on the Dolphins Pacific Show here in Koror, Palau. You see back a few years ago Roxy and her seven partners were scheduled for a trip to the slaughterhouse before Dolphins Pacific’s owners rescued the dolphins and brought them to Koror. Here in Koror they built Dolphin Bay, a natural park containing over 200 million gallons of water, with over 100,000 square yards of surface area, the largest body of water housing dolphins anywhere in the world. The facility, nestled within the beautiful Rock Islands is only a five-minute boat ride from Koror. Roxy and her friends seem to enjoy the fifty-foot deep water and the care they receive at Dolphins Pacific.

When I arrived at their facility Roxy and her friends were cleaning the pens. Well, not quite cleaning the pens, but cleaning leaves out of the water that had fallen in from the overhanging trees that perch on the neighboring islands. The dolphins have been trained to bring leaves to the trainers and exchange them for snacks. If the dolphins eat the leaves they become sick, so their training keeps them well and has a bonus of keeping the pens clear of leaves.

Dolphins Pacific is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of the special abilities possessed by dolphins. They stress environmental education and provide a place where people can experience directly the special powers the dolphins display. Dolphin Bay is entirely handicapped accessible and offers programs for the physically disabled as well as children’s programs in conjunction with the Ministry of Education of Palau.

The people of Palau have widely different opinions of the whole dolphin experience. While many politicians and educators have praised the project, there are many local islanders who are against keeping dolphins in captivity and resent the projects location in the Rock Islands, an area where development was supposedly prohibited. Regardless of all the above, the facility is first class and offers far more space for the dolphins than similar facilities worldwide, so I will let you pass your own judgment on Dolphins Pacific. Roxy was too busy trading leaves for sardines to express an opinion.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005 at 12:51 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.