Dolphins off the Palos Verdes coast are our Ambassadors of the Deep
Dolphins are increasingly present off the Palos Verdes coast, providing a closer glimpse of one of the ocean’s most mysterious, beckoning, and wildly social beings by Mark McDermott Dolphins have a way of changing the arc of a human life. Eric Martin remembers the exact moment his life with dolphins began. It was 9 o’clock in the morning on October 28, 1984. Through his job as a guide at Marineland, he’d become acquainted with marine photographer Bob Talbot, who worked with the ACS/LA Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project that had just been established in Palos Verdes. That morning, Martin arrived at work and ran into Talbot, who was in a hurry. A pod of orcas had been spotted off the coast. Talbot would later become famous, both as a photographer and as a director of such films as Free Willy, Flipper, Into the Blue, and Dolphin Story 2. But at the time, he was just another member of a certain tribe of avid people who spend as much time as possible in the company of marine mammals. Martin, just out of high school, was both an animal lover and photo enthusiast. He started photographing birds around his hometown of El Segundo at the age of 10, and as a teenager volunteered as a…
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