ROMA Hayward's role at Dolphin Quest is arguably the most important there — it falls to her to manage the talent, the Dockyard facility's nine trainers and eight dolphins."I basically keep an eye on the dolphins," she explained. "I make sure they're healthy and well cared for, all of which entails their mental and physical health.

"So our training sessions and even our interactions in the water are all part of stimulating them in terms of making their lives enriching. I try and keep them on their toes and thinking about what's coming next. That helps with their mental and their physical health."

Three of the dolphins are now pregnant. According to Mrs. Hayward, the initial responsibility of caring for the calves will fall to the mothers.

"Basically, the moms do most of it. Our moms are really good at taking care of the calves themselves. All three of the girls that are pregnant are experienced moms so they've been doing great.

"They've had calves in tow before. The initial 24 to 48 hours basically involves watching to make sure the mom is nursing and accepting her calf appropriately and things like that.

"In terms of the training aspect, the trainers and crew are in the water right from the start with the calf. So the calf is getting used to us being around. And because we have experienced moms they don't mind us in the water at all with them and will actually bring their calf by for us to see and show them off.

"So right from the start the calf is used to us bipeds being in the water and trying to swim around. And then when the mom feels more comfortable she'll bring them over and we'll be able to touch the calf and things like that.

"So we'll desensitise the calf to touches. They actually get quite curious just like any other baby and quite pokey. They want to see what's going on right from the start. You can consider it training because it is them just getting used to us and people being in the water."

The moms don't mind the intrusion either.

"We're able to bring guests in the water to just float and observe them. Once moms get a hang of what they're doing with the new calf. Initially, in the first 48 hours the calf is not that good at swimming. It can swim, but it can't turn and stop so the mom has to do all that.

"Once the calf gets some time under its belt and some swimming lessons from mom, we can then have guests in to observe. Usually we don't invade their space at all, we just kind of hang out at the side.

"If the mom wants to come by with the calf, we have guests put masks on and they get a chance to view it underwater. It's pretty neat. You've got this little baby come by.

"When you're in the water, regardless of whether it's a calf or not, if you have a mask on you can hear a lot of the communication that's happening between the dolphins.

"It's usually more communication between mom and calf because she's telling him you need to stay close, don't stray too far, come over here and so you'll hear a lot of whistles and clicks and things underwater."

A limit is placed on how many guests frolic with the dolphins on any given day.

As explained by Mrs. Hayward: "We have our daily schedule set up in advance. We follow the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquarium standards for interactions and that requires no more than two hours per day of interaction time per dolphin. And we're well underneath that.

"These guys don't even come close. They take turns participating in programmes and things. And we have lots of people standing on the sides watching as well.

"So no matter if you're participating or if you're watching you get a chance to see, first hand, what these amazing animals can do and how precious they are."THE dolphins are fed a "smorgasbord" of fish, the quality of which is no less than would be served to a human being. "They get herring, mackerel, capeland and squid and they get fed all throughout the day. We break it down into different sessions to make it fun and exciting for them. "Depending on the size of the animal and what stage they are in life, is what they get as a baseline in terms of their food intake and so it could range from 20 to 35 pounds of fish a day.

"It is a lot of fish and it's restaurant quality fish that we get brought in. One of the guidelines we tell the trainers when they're learning — we break out the fish every morning and it's a couple hundred pounds of fish — is if it doesn't look good enough for you to have it on your plate, the dolphins don't get it either.

"We have individual buckets for them because we manage their caloric intake. We look at the fatty fish versus the not-so-fatty fish for calories and things.

"Especially with pregnant moms you have to monitor closely their weight gain and that just like with us when we're going through a pregnancy. You don't want them to gain too much too fast even though their caloric intake is increasing.

"So each diet is monitored closely for each of the animals to see if there's any concerns — if they're not that hungry, maybe they have a high caloric diet and we need to change that.

"So we monitor closely. Part of that is not only their behaviour and their attitude throughout the day but we also do regular measurements and weights.

"We have them trained to beach out onto a scale so we can take their weight. If they can't — because they're younger and haven't been trained yet — we do measurements of their girth and their length and we have a calculation that goes into a formula and we can figure out if they are at the appropriate weight or not. We track that monthly."

Attention is also paid to ensure all-round health is made, with the dolphins regularly scheduled for visits to the "doctor".

"Every morning they basically take what we call a trip to the doctor. Each of the dolphins sees a trainer and we do an overall check on them to make sure everything's okay with them, everything's normal.

"We do a body scan. We have a look in their mouths. We're looking at their eyes, assessing their appetite and all that. There are trained preventative healthcare behaviours.

"We can take a voluntary blow sample from them, where they chuff into a cup and we look at that under a microscope and make sure everything's going okay with their upper respiratory system.

"We take quarterly blood samples from them and we test everything that (a human being) would be tested (for) if they ever had a sample taken by a doctor in terms of their organ functions as well as their immune system and everything else.

"We make sure that's all in check. We also do gastric samples monthly where we take a stomach sample to make sure their digestion is all happening happily.

"We also do regular faecal samples. They've been trained to line up and allow us to collect these samples with no restraint. That allows us to get a baseline then so if they're off for whatever reason we know exactly what it is because we have a baseline for each of the individual animals.

"It is intense. We go through that every morning and even if we're not collecting the sample we'll at least ask for the behaviour so that we don't lose it, they don't forget it."

Roma ensures dolphins are well looked after