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Internship delivers a daily dolphin dose

June 27, 2006

You know it´s going to be a good summer when your internship co-workers are named Alvin, Casique, Dazzle and Nellie, and they regularly juggle basketballs, perform pirouettes and eat nothing but fresh fish.

Justin Eddings, a senior from Huntington, N.Y., is spending three months this summer working with Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins as an intern at the Dolphin Conservation Center at Marineland in Florida.

As an intern, Eddings spends his days assisting the professional dolphin trainers with the public education programs - including dolphin hands-on and interaction experiences - along with feeding the dolphins, cleaning the 1.3 million gallon tank, assisting with administrative tasks and presenting PowerPoint presentations about dolphin conservation issues.

He also participates in the Daily Dolphin Assessment, in which the trainers and interns physically inspect the dolphins for any signs of disease or abnormalities. That includes Pebbles, a female dolphin who is pregnant and due in December, and Nellie, who was born at the oceanarium in 1953 - 15 years after Marineland´s founding as the world´s first oceanarium in 1938.

Eddings, a biology major with a concentration in marine biology, was particularly well qualified for the internship as he has been a volunteer at the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration since November 2004. There he spends alternate Saturdays working with the Beluga whales, sea lions and seals. In addition, for the past four summers he has worked at the Sea Stars Marine Camp at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Marine Program in Centerport, N.Y.

"I want to hit all the areas of marine biology but right now I am really interested in working with dolphins," Eddings said.

According to Eddings, the Dolphin Conservation Center, located just steps from the Atlantic Ocean a few miles south of St. Augustine, focuses more on conservation issues and education - where the public can experience dolphins up close - than the stereotypical dolphin "shows." Currently there are 11 dolphins in residence there.

The intern training program consists of four levels, in which the interns are given increased responsibilities. Three weeks into the internship, Eddings completed his first level and is beginning the second level.

Eddings also credited a class he took in his freshman year at Connecticut College - Biology of Marine Mammals - for preparing him for this internship. In addition to classroom work, the class featured trips for whale watching off Provincetown, Mass. and seal watching in the Long Island Sound just a short boat ride from campus.

Eddings is one of seven interns at the facility, which includes students from other colleges such as University of San Diego, Michigan State University, Florida Southern College, Texas State University, and the College of Charleston. The internship is unpaid, so he appreciates the college´s CELS funded internship program, which guarantees a $3,000 stipend to CC students who complete a comprehensive career preparation program.

Upon graduation Eddings hopes to pursue a position in marine biology, perhaps in an aquarium or oceanarium setting and attend graduate school.

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Learn more about the CELS internship program. And view the biology department course catalog.. At Connecticut College, students may major in biological sciences without a specific concentration or choose a concentration in either ecology or cell/molecular biology. Within the biology major, students may structure their program around a theme such as marine biology or developmental biology.

For more information contact: Amy Sullivan (860) 439-2526; amy.sullivan@conncoll.edu