Best job/worst job: Swimming with captive dolphins led to saving wild ones

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Zoologist Associate Prof Liz Slooten (pictured beside the Otago Harbour) reflects on her best job as a youngster, working with dolphins and walruses. Photo by Linda Robertson.

Prof Slooten (51), who emigrated to New Zealand in 1977 at the age of 19, discusses with John Gibb the first job she gained as a young woman.

This job, which was to change her life, was at a marineland in Harderwijk, 50km east of the Dutch capital, Amsterdam.

"My first job was at a marineland with captive dolphins.

"The best part of the job was to get into the 8m-deep tank with a basket of fish and feed the dolphins.

"This happened three or four times a day, with the staff taking turns.

Visitors to the marineland would watch through a glass wall in the tank.

"It was pure chance getting that job.

"In my last year at high school, someone visiting my parents asked what I planned to do after finishing school.

"I said I wasn't sure but wanted to do 'something with animals' and he offered me a holiday job at the marineland for a few months."

Previously, she had been thinking about becoming a vet's assistant, but the marineland job sparked her interest in animals of the marine kind.

"I loved the dolphins, seals, walruses and other animals in the marineland and decided to study biology.

"Swimming with the dolphins was a small part of the job."

She vividly remembers how playful some young walruses were.

They may have been young but, already about 2.5m long and weighing about 100kg, they were strong and sizeable playmates.

"They were bored out of their skulls and missing their mothers.

"They were thinking: `Finally, here is someone to play with'."

Sometimes they would roll themselves up in the 15m-long air hose, briefly interrupting her air supply.

"They were certainly very attention-seeking."

Other times, as if reluctant for the fun to end too soon, they would grab her around the waist as she attempted to leave the pool.

"Other tasks included collecting water from all the tanks to check water quality, feeding the young walruses and doing some typing for a student who was studying dolphin behaviour and was working on her PhD thesis.

"Talking with her probably gave me the idea to study biology.

"I emigrated to New Zealand in 1977, following my two brothers, and our parents followed a few years later once they had retired.

"After a BSc and MSc at Auckland University, it was time to get back to the dolphins.

" I had met Steve Dawson during my BSc studies and we decided to study Hector's dolphin for our PhD degrees at Canterbury University.

"These dolphins were being caught in gillnet and trawl fisheries and very little was known about how many dolphins were killed each year, how fast they breed and whether this was sustainable.

"Hector's dolphin, which is only found in New Zealand, has declined from an original population of about 30,000 to fewer than 8000 individuals today due to fishing impacts.

"My job now is to teach at Otago University and continue research on Hector's dolphin.

It's been great to change from feeding dolphins in captivity to helping to save dolphins in the wild."