To complete my doctoral research, I had to overcome a fundamental challenge to any scientist wanting to study marine mammal social behavior. Any study of social behavior involves many hours of observations of interactions between the animals you are studying. That is very difficult to do with dolphins, since they spend their lives underwater out of our view. The one person I knew that had tackled this problem was Dr. Ken Norris. He had built two crazy-looking vessels that al

The idea to study marine mammals underwater seems very obvious, but how do you do it? You can see them when diving or snorkeling, but that will only last for a few seconds in the wild, unless they decide to stay near you. And even if you could keep up with them in the water while snorkeling or scuba diving (I spent years trying to figure this out), they will likely react to you as another animal, affecting their behavior, so your observations will be biased. So, the way to