Mammal Rescue and Education

Tour at a Glance | Experience Required | Cost | Certifications Offered
Itinerary | What’s Included | Certifications

Become a part of their “pod” as you swim alongside dolphins at a marine mammal care facility.

Tour at a glance:

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  • Spend time with a local marine biologist learning about marine mammals and conservation
  • Experience the life of a marine biologist for a day as you get hands-on experience learning about the rescue and rehabilitation of stranded or injured dolphins
  • Experience the care and maintenance of marine mammals at a managed care facility
  • Experience a “natural swim” with dolphins that are not able to be released into the wild

Experience Required:

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This tour requires no previous marine mammal experience at all! However, basic snorkeling and swimming ability is required.

Costs:

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Dolphins Plus’ pricing starts at $200 per person for basic dolphin interactions and Marine Mammal Care Lab.

The Marine Mammal education programs start at $20 per person.

We can arrange a tour at the Marine Mammal Conservancy free of charge, with the request of a donation to MMC.

When you purchase any of our tours, you’ll automatically get 10% off a second tour of equal or lesser value. This offer is good for one year from the purchase of the first tour. In addition, kids under 12 years of age get a 10% discount on every tour.

Please call us at 1-877-99-GO-ECO; or e-mail: info@goecokeys.com, for specific pricing of this tour.

Certifications:

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All participants will earn an EcoKeys Marine Mammal Conservation Certification.

Itinerary:

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Marine Mammal Conservancy

Visit the Marine Mammal Conservancy to learn about how people can help stranded or injured dolphins. We can arrange a tour and presentation for you, and we encourage you to sign up to become a volunteer while you’re there!

Dolphins Plus

There is an optional, hour-long classroom component to this tour that takes place from 8:30 a.m. until 9:30 a.m. In it, you’ll have the opportunity to participate in your choice of a Marine Mammal Conservation, Florida Keys Conservation or Intro to Marine Mammals (recommended for ages 12 and under) or Marine Mammal Rescue and Rehabilitation lecture.

Once the classroom session has finished, you’ll receive instruction on dolphin body language and the proper etiquette for your dolphin interaction. Then you’ll spend half an hour (10:30 a.m. – 11 a.m.) in the water as part of our “natural swim experience.” Here you’ll have the chance to swim with the resident bottlenose dolphin population at a managed care facility. This is followed by your participation in the Marine Mammal Care Lab (11 a.m. – 12 noon), where you’ll have the opportunity to experience the husbandry and training practices necessary to successfully manage a healthy population of marine mammals.

What is included:

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  • Classroom tutorial & observation
  • Monitored swimming and/or interacting with marine mammals
  • Marine mammologist to answer all of your questions
  • EcoKeys t-shirt