mystic marinelife aquarium internship

 
 
 
That's me with Naku, one of the aquarium's three female beluga whales.
 
 
                          For my intern project, I designed an experiment to look at the choice behavior of a beluga whale, and Naku was
                  my randomly selected subject. During the summer, I introduced two objects to Naku, one associated with one fish
                  and the other associated with five fish. I had hoped that over repeated presentations, she would learn to pick the
                  object associated with the greater reward. However, after about a hundred presentations, she always picked the
                  object in my left hand, regardless of its reward value.
 
                          I continued my internship into the fall and decided to try to teach Naku the behavior I was looking for by
                  using some training tools and an object worth no reward, i.e. zero fish. After breaking Naku of her left-hand focus,
                  I began to use the bridge randomly, and I discontinued the use of the recall and the least reinforcing stimulus (LRS).
                  Finally, I returned to the one fish vs. five fish comparison using two new objects, and, after 19 sessions, Naku
                  achieved criterion. She chose the object worth the greater reward ten times out of ten presentations, ending with a
                  cumulative percentage of 67%. Thus, I concluded that a beluga whale could be taught to discriminate between objects
                  associated with different fish rewards. If you would like to know more about my study, please see my abstract.
 
 
 
Mystic's other beluga whales are Aurora and Kela.



Aurora is "round all over." She has a bulbous head and a white saddlepatch scar on her back.

Kela is the "little" whale. She is the smallest of the three belugas and loves to listen to music.

 
 
 
 
While I was an intern, Mystic also had three female bottlenose dolphins - Nina, Arrow, and Misty.
 
 
 


Nina is the "middle child," but she is also the dominant female. She has a scar running across the left side of her melon.

Arrow is the youngest of the group, however, she is also the largest. She is white in color, putting the belugas to shame.



Misty is the oldest of the three. She has very prominent stripes on her melon and is the trickster of the group.
 
 
 
 
Since I have left Mystic, they have added a young, male bottlenose dolphin, Stormy.

 

 
Stormy is a rehabilitated dolphin. He has fit in well with
the girls in the World of the Dolphin, and even
mimics their behaviors.

 
 
 
 
                              They have also moved the belugas out to the Alaskan Coast exhibit. Click on the words to link
                                         to the aquarium's photo tour, and click on the dolphin to see my pictures.
 
 
 
 
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