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The Dolphin Strategy

By all rights, life in the sea should leave a dolphin baked, crushed, and sterile. This graceful mammal avoids such a fate only by slipping through loopholes in the laws of physiology.

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Dawn Noren hoists oxygen tanks onto her back, places an air regulator in her mouth, grabs a plastic box and slate, and falls out of the motorboat into the ocean. Through 50 feet of pale blue Bahamas water she can see the ten other divers kneeling in a circle on the sandy, ribbed seafloor. She swims down to the group and positions herself at its edge. Two more divers arrive and glide into the middle of the circle, carrying with them long white drums full of dead herring. They are followed by the animals that brought everyone here: two Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins named Bimini and Stripe.

The circled divers are tourists who have paid dearly--about $100- -to spend half an hour in the dolphins’ element. The two divers with the dead fish are Patrick Berry and Eden Butler, trainers who work with a company called the Dolphin Experience, which keeps ...

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