Life under the sea

Mathis Winkler

NEWPORT BEACH -- On the wall just outside Dennis Kelly’s office hangs

a gigantic map of the world. Usually the marine science professor at

Orange Coast College brings his own students there for some trying

questions.

Sometimes, his “victims” are random people passing by.

Kelly usually has two questions for them.

“Where is the earth’s longest mountain range?” he asks. And “where is

the tallest mountain?” The answers in 95% of all cases -- the Himalayas

and Mount Everest -- are wrong.

The mid-ocean ridge stretches 46,000 miles around the globe, more than

four times the lengths of the Andes, Rockies and Himalayas combined. And

counting the part that’s hidden under water, Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano

rises 33,465 feet from the ocean floor, beating Mount Everest by 4,437

feet.

It’s Kelly’s way to get students thinking about his area of expertise,

much in the way his own interest in dolphins helped spark people’s

willingness to find out more about Kelly’s underwater world.

“You can be as excited about hypothermic circulation as you want,” he

said. “You mention dolphins and you have [the students’] attention.”

Kelly began researching dolphins almost a quarter-century ago. While

one scientific paper suggested in 1960 that maybe as many as 50 dolphins

could inhabit Orange County’s shoreline, Kelly wanted to find out more.

He came up with a system to track the animals and 37 boat surveys

later, he and his students discovered that between 89 and 137 dolphins

called the area between San Onofre and Seal Beach their home.

Some aspects of his work revealed worrying realities. Dead dolphins

found on the beach had such high levels of toxins in their bodies that a

beach burial would have amounted to a federal violation, he said.

“It would have been toxic waste,” he said.

The Orange County Sanitation District, which was looking for ways to

dump sewage into the ocean, didn’t particularly care for Kelly’s

discovery. While they paid him $3,700 for a report on the effect of

toxins, a promise to include his findings in the district’s annual report

never materialized, he said.

But Kelly also discovered more joyful truths about the life of

dolphins. After observing a dozen dolphin births over several years, with

other dolphins surrounding the mother-to-be in a circle for hours before,

a Laguna Beach woman finally gave him a video tape that documented his

sightings.

Recently, Kelly presented his findings to fellow marine scientists at

a conference in Monterey.

And Kelly’s admiration for the animals is still going strong.

Dolphins “are the most special of all mammals in my opinion,” he said.

“They’re still here and seem to be doing well despite all the things that

we have been doing to their environment in all the 52 years that I’ve

been alive.”

A few weeks from now, after he marries psychologist Laurie Poore on

April 7, Kelly will get a chance to observe dolphins someplace he’s never

been.

The couple will spend their honeymoon on the Greek island of Crete.

“I’ve been to Antarctica twice and the South Pacific,” he said. “But

I’ve never been east of zero longitude.”