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Fins to Feather

by Scarlet Colley - August, 2000

There are few words left to describe our dolphin encounters without repeating ourselves. Colley and I are beyond words at this point with the most incredible dolphin encounters we have ever experienced in our five years with our dolphin family. To have three babies playing and their mothers encouraging their play and playing with them, has been the highlight of our encounters. Our video library is now quite extrodinaire.

We promised all of you an update on Gilly and we had a wonderful visit with him last week in San Antonio. For those of you who do not know our Gilly, he is at Sea World in San Antonio. This is our little dolphin who was found in a gill net at the end of the causeway by Stephen Murphy about six years ago. The poor little baby was taken to the Coastal Studies Lab where he was given very little hope of surviving. But he made it with the wonderful care of our veterinarian from the Gladys Porter Zoo and with all the help of our local supporters. Soon Gilly was too big to handle and Sea World has been his home ever since. He is now more than three hundred and sixty pounds and seven and a half feet long. He is a real ham too. We were greeted by Gilly's keeper and given the behind the scene's tour to where Gilly is being kept. For the first six years of his life he had been in the community tank out in the public viewing area where the children fed him and he thrived on all the attention. When we arrived, he had been moved to the back tanks to keep an older dolphin named Clicker company.

It was an incredible experience for us to be able to actually touch a dolphin and feed him too. With our wild dolphins we never feed them and even though they come close enough to our boat to touch them we have never broken faith with them to touch them. So there we were with Gilly, feeding him and touching him. He loved it and did not interact with us like our wild dolphin until the food was put away. Only then did he start to play with us and interact. Colley and I were glad to reaffirm our belief that our wild dolphin, when they have full tummies, come and play with us and are not begging for food. They love the enthusiasm that we have for them and the things that they do for us are like the dolphins at Sea World that thrive on the enthusiasm of the spectators as they do their jumps and other performances. I was literally in tears to see Gilly for the first time and to know that his family is out in our bay with us every day. Gilly is happy and doing well and plays a very important role in educating our public about the beauty and joy of bottlenose dolphins. He is our ambassador of South Padre Island and of his fabulous family of dolphins we have here in the Laguna Madre Bay. So for all of you who want to feed a dolphin, remember Sea World is the place to do it and Gilly's family can feed themselves and will play for all of you for free. And for all of you who have been wondering how Gilly is doing , he is doing wonderfully!!!! Join us next time for pictures of our babies playing!!!

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