Volume 1, No. 6. April 20, 2001
Shedding inhibitions
Next week the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Illinois, will open a new dolphin and whale show celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Oceanarium’s opening. For the first time in years, the show will feature Shedd’s resident beluga whales, which had yet to be trained to do certain behaviors on command before an audience. With no suitable off-public tank available, the aquarium’s trainers faced the prospect of tutoring the whales after hours.
Or, better yet, do the tutoring in public and call it a feature presentation.
"All About Training" began January 2 and focused on training techniques employed at the Shedd Aquarium. A portion of the show was turned over to actual training of the belugas in preparation for their new show opening April 27.
"It was the best of both worlds," said Ken Ramirez, the aquarium’s director of training and husbandry. "We do real training in front of the audience and talk about training and why it is done. It is beneficial for the beluga whales to get used to the public watching them in that space. The public wasn’t new, and the space wasn’t new, but putting them together was new, and in a more structured format with the narrator talking and music playing in the background. Those were elements we wanted to get them used to."
The three months of public rehearsals paid off for the stars. Early in the year they would appear for just two to three minutes (and sometimes wouldn’t come out at all), but now they are perfecting their 10-minute act for the new 25-minute show.
It also proved beneficial for the show’s producers, who could gauge audience reaction to determine what behaviors to include in the new show’s script and what to forego. Though dolphin presentations are usually "showier" than "All About Training" proved to be, most of the audience, many of whom hold season passes, enjoyed watching the "behind-the-scenes" lessons in positive training techniques, Ramirez said. "A lot of kids came out saying, ‘What if I do that with my dog?’"
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