For Pete's Sake, Don't Swim with the Dolphins

 by MJ Malleck// Today’s postcard is from St. Petersburg, Florida in March 1973.

Today’s postcard is from St. Petersburg, Florida in March 1973. 

“Wednesday. Dear Friends, Here we are and enjoying every minute. Thanks very much for your lovely note, also, congratulations on your new grandchild. We know how proud it makes one feel. See you soon, Love Wilf and Lauretta.” 

“Wednesday. Dear Friends, Here we are and enjoying every minute. Thanks very much for your lovely note, also, congratulations on your new grandchild. We know how proud it makes one feel. See you soon, Love Wilf and Lauretta.”

The note is written sideways for more space since the descriptor is long. I wonder if these friends are using the receiver’s Florida place, as some Canadians who can afford to, get a place south for winter vacations. We call them “snowbirds”. This is because they mention a lovely note, which may have been on the table waiting for them to arrive.  (No text messages or emails in 1973).

The use of the word “proud” is a bit of a throwback too. I have several grandchildren and while I love them to pieces, I’m not sure I’d say I’m “proud” that my children decided to have children. Maybe pleased, or grateful for the chance to be a grandmother. Proud is typically reserved for accomplishments today, don’t you think?  

The stamp a 6 cent USA depicting Eisenhower.

“Porpoises leaping as high as 25 feet into the air, delight the audience in the 1,240,000-gallon main tank at the fabulous AQUATARIUM on St. Petersburg Beach, Florida. This show is climaxed by the divers hand feeding the Porpoise, 23 feet below the surface. Spectators view this feat through any of the 120 windows located on the two lower levels of this 3 ½ storied tank.”

The picture shows a handler feeding a porpoise who is leaping UP out of the tank. The quality of the picture is reminiscent of others we’ve seen (poor quality).  

Aquatarium was a 17-acres tourist attraction that opened in 1964. The audience was sheltered under a golden dome around the world’s largest circular marine tank. The star attraction was a dolphin named Floppy, famed for her 25-foot leaps into the air…I wonder if the picture here is actually of Floppy, a dolphin.

My first curiosity is about the differences between a porpoise and a dolphin.

I learn that porpoises and dolphins are both marine mammals from the same order Cetacea (from Greek ketos meaning “large sea creature”) and they are both highly intelligent with complex brains and the ability to produce sonar waves to navigate. They look different though, with porpoises having a triangular dorsal fin (the one on their back), smaller mouths and teeth, shorter snouts and are more portly (less lean) in the body. The porpoise in the picture looks lean, but I can see that it doesn’t quite feel “dolphin” shaped to me.

You probably know that dolphins communicate underwater to each other by making whistling sounds through their blowholes. Porpoise’s do not because their blowholes are structurally different.

Dolphins are more prevalent as there are 32 species and only seven of porpoises. Some species are not endangered, but some are. Since 1996 the Vaquita porpoise has been listed as critically endangered, with less than 30 animals remaining in the wild. Many concerned scientists and conservationists are working to educate us about porpoises (who get far less press than the popular dolphins and whales). There is even a six-episode podcast from 2020-2021 where host Lauren Hartling explores the world of porpoises, and it’s called “Not a Dolphin”. (Reminds me of the marketer’s advice, if you can’t be number one than position yourself as a better alternative.)  

https://podcast.porpoise.org/

Wilf and Lauretta got to the Aquatarium a few years after the opening of Walt Disney World (1971) and the gasoline shortages of the mid-70s. The park owners, faced with declining visitors, renamed the place Shark World when the 1975 film Jaws was so popular. But the park closed in 1977 and eventually torn down to make way for the Silver Sands Beach and Racquet Club condominiums.

You can read more about the small family-owned first aquarium in St. Pete’s and how porpoises and dolphins (bottlenose dolphins were often called porpoises back then) were legally harassed and captured before Congress passed an act in 1971 protecting them. When this aquarium closed the owners sold all their stock, including a very intelligent trained porpoise, to Aquatarium. 

https://stpetecatalyst.com/vintage-st-pete-paddy-the-porpoise-and-the-marine-arena/

It’s shocking for us today, with the research on the intelligence of these animals and our understanding of how they live in large groups (pods) which are often lifetime family units, to read how they were treated in the past (and still are in some places in the world). The Human Society in the US opposes the capture of all marine mammals from the wild for any type of public display or entertainment. The very nature of these animals makes them uniquely unsuited to confinement. National Geographic reported in 2016 that public scrutiny of using captive cetaceans for entertainment purposes has risen in recent years, a 2014 poll showing that half of the thousand people in the survey opposed keeping orcas in captivity, up 11 percentage points from two years earlier.

In January 2018 the Vancouver Aquarium board decided to stop keeping marine mammals in captivity. "The public told us they believed the continuing importation and display of these intelligent and sociable mammals was unethical and incompatible with evolving public opinion and we amended our bylaws accordingly. We look forward to working with the Vancouver Aquarium as it intensifies its focus on Ocean Wise research and conservation," said a statement from park board chair Stuart Mackinnon.
Still popular are the SWTD programs – Swim With the Dolphins –which many people pay for, and which some people use as therapy, although with little scientific evidence and the Human Society also advocating against.
 
PS This postcard has no postal code because Canada only began testing them in April 1971. I wonder when most people started to use them. That would have been a big change.