Florida - Day 7

To recover from our day at Busch Gardens, we took a slower pace today and explored a local attraction - The Clearwater Marine Aquarium. It's a little aquarium that rescues marine animals in the hopes of rehabilitating them, but now it's getting quite famous because it houses the star of a movie that is coming out this fall called Dolphin Tale. It rescued a dolphin about 3 years ago that was tangled in a crab net. As a result of its injuries, it lost its tail and they thought it might die. But she has survived and amazingly enough, has even learned to swim fairly well without a tail. They have made her a prosthetic tail as well, so that she can swim properly and to maintain proper muscle development in her. She's called Winter because they found her in winter. It was pretty cool to see her, but it was pretty crowded and nuts as the facility (formerly a water treatment plant) is not designed for crowds of this size. A bunch of the movie was shot right on site, so it will be cool to recognize some of the sights and of course, the star.

It rained all day, so we were thankful that we went to Busch Gardens yesterday as today would have been a right-off. Now it's a supper of butter chicken and then a cozy movie in the room.

Winter the dophin. Without a tail she has learned to swim by flexing her body side to side like a fish, instead of up and down like other dolphins.

This is Nicholas. He stopped to have a good look at me.

Winter's peduncle is 2 vertebraes shorter than it should be.

She's so cute!

Here's Winter showing off for the crowd.

Winter's prosthetic tail.