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you gain by swimming with a dolphin or interacting with a dolphin 

 in this way. 



Senator Kerry. Do not get me wrong. I think it would be thrill- 

 ing and fascinating. I do not dispute that. 



Dr. Stone. Well, there is much more than that, Senator. We 

 have, and we have submitted this for the written testimony, a sta- 

 tistical analysis of over 9,000 questionnaires gathered from partici- 

 pants in our program. We take our education role, our mission 

 very, very seriously, and for that reason we are constantly getting 

 feedback from the public to see if we are fulfilling that role of 

 teaching conservation awareness and of inspiring people to become 

 more involved in environmental issues. 



The whole educational field is moving toward interaction. Re- 

 search in education peer review publications indicates undoubtedly 

 that activity based or interactive educational programs in science 

 in schools provide a much more effective learning process for chil- 

 dren. Your own children benefited from seeing these dolphins. 



We know from these questionnaires, and I will cite a few of these 

 statistics — again, this is a sample size of over 9,000 participants. 

 When asked to compare the education value and overall personal 

 impact of their dolpnin experience at our facility with other expo- 

 sures they have had with dolphins they have had in the wild, this 

 is their answer. Fully 91.4 percent of our participants feel that the 

 educational value and overall personal impact of their dolphin ex- 

 perience is greater than nature movies, videos, books, newspapers, 

 and magazines — 91.4 percent. 



In addition, we asked them to compare the educational value of 

 the personal impact of their experience with observation in the 

 wild which, in and of itself, is a very powerful message. Fully 89.5 

 percent of our participants feel that the educational value and 

 overall personal impact of a close personal experience is even great- 

 er than observation in the wild. 



In addition, we have asked people to tell us if they would rec- 

 ommend that these programs continue — 99.6 percent recommended 

 that interactive programs should continue as a means to increase- 

 public sensitivity and appreciation of dolphins and dolphins con- 

 cerns, and 99.3 percent believe that an interactive experience like 

 Dolphin Quest does inspire people to actively, and the key word 

 here is actively, support environmental issues. 



We bring a very powerful message to the public. We take our 

 roles very responsibly. And I would like to also now address the 

 issue of injuries, which you brought up. 



These programs can be run very very safely. The programs 

 where the two incidents occurred that you have referred to are not 

 AlliEince members and are not members of the AAZPA. In fact, the 

 one incident of sexual harassment of a young girl occurred at the 

 only "swim with" program that deliberately chooses not to train its 

 dolphins. The two programs that belong to the Alliance believe that 

 this is unacceptable, as does the Alliance. 



Marine mammals readily respond to modern training techniques 

 involving positive reinforcement and can be easily trained to ex- 

 hibit only appropriate behavior when interacting with the public. 

 That does not involve sexual harassment. That type of behavior 

 has never occurred, not one incident in either of our two facilities. 



