BEHAVIOUR l8l 



from Newfoundland, l)ut neither survived the five-week journey by ship 

 for very long. Living Bekigas were also exhibited during 1909 in a big 

 tank in the docks of Atlantic City, and in 19 14 James watched the birth 

 of a young porpoise in Brighton Aquarium. In 1907 New York Aquarium 

 kept a school of Bottlenose Dolphins in a pool 40 feet in diameter and 

 .seven feet deep, and some scientific institutes, e.g. Woods Hole Laboratory, 

 also managed to keep an odd Bottlenose Dolphin. In a pool near Namazu 

 (Japan) , space was provided not only for different species of dolphin but 

 also for a Little Piked Whale which lived there for a whole month. 



Still, Marineland is much more fortunate than European aquaria, in 

 that it is closer to the sea, and in that the transport of dolphins presents 

 comparatively few difficulties. For this reason, special mention must be 

 made of the efforts of W. H. Dudok van Heel (Zoological Station at den 

 Helder) to capture porpoises off' Denmark and to transport them alive to 

 Holland (December ig57-January 1958). With the assistance of the 

 director of the Texels Museum, G.J. de Haan, he organized an expedition 

 to Teglgaard near Middelfart where, as we have seen on page 51, 

 porpoises have been caught since the sixteenth century. Though the 

 industry folded up after the Second World War, there were still enough 

 skilled fishermen left to net some twenty porpoises within a few weeks. 

 The animals became used to human contact fairly quickly, and even 

 allowed themselves to be stroked and to be fed by hand. They were taken 

 to Holland in a truck equipped with latex foam mattresses on which the 

 animals were kept wet throughout the journey. Despite the enormous 

 efforts made by the leaders of the expedition - they kept a constant vigil 

 for twenty-four bitterly cold hours - only one of the captured animals 

 reached a basin on Texel alive, to survive for a few months. These 

 porpoises differed from Bottlenose and other dolphins in that they showed 

 clear symptoms of shock when they were lifted out of the water - their 

 heart beat became very irregular, they passed a great deal of urine, and 

 they showed clear signs of having muscle cramp. Most of them died within 

 thirty seconds, and all but one of those that survived the initial shock, 

 died in the truck or very shortly after transport. Although the causes of this 

 shock are not quite clear, it seems that the symptoms occur when the 

 animals are lifted out of deep water (13-20 feet) but not when they are 

 lifted out of shallow water (3-6 feet). Since similar experiences have been 

 reported in the case of Phocaenoid porpoises off' California, we may 

 conclude that most porpoises have this special sensitivity. 



Using his one survivor, W. H. Dudok van Heel carried out a number of 

 important experiments on the hearing of porpoises (see Chapter 7) . The 

 expedition also provided much useful information on the capture and 

 transport of porpoises, and showed that the difficulties involved are such 



