Fish Training at the New England Aquarium

Our friend and partner Russ from R2 Fish School posted a link on his Facebook page to this video from the New England Aquarium of one of their curators training training Blondie the lump fish swimming through a hoop. Its hard to tell, but it looks like they are using one of our training kits. Pretty cool to see professional fish keepers starting to pursue fish training!

--Dean

Drench TV Commercial

Here is a really clever TV commercial for Drench bottled water, posted to the R2 Fish School Facebook page. The goldfish is named Mr. Memory, and he can do some very impressive stunts. Somehow I think there is a bit of trick photography going on, but very cool anyway!

--Dean

Video of Goldfish Trained to Fetch

Here is a really nice video of a goldfish trained using the R2 Fish School training kit to fetch a ring. Really impressive! Almost as talented as Comet :-). And the video has over 120,000 views in just a couple days!

But what's with the cloudy tank? If you're going to take the time to train and video your fish doing tricks, you really should take better care of the tank!

--Dean

Girl Teaches Goldfish How To Fetch - Watch more Funny Videos

Fish Welfare Survey

Miriam Sullivan from the the University of Western Australia is studying the welfare of aquarium fish. She's conducting a survey on the topic to better understand people's attitudes and practices when it comes to pet fish keeping. It is a topic that really deserves more attention, and we here at Fish School commend Miriam on her fine work. We encourage all of our readers to fill out the survey - it only takes a couple minutes.

I hope Miriam can help change the general public's sad indifference towards the welfare of fish, both in home aquariums and in the wild, as exemplified by this week's tragic defeat of an effort to save the majestic and endangered bluefin tuna. Land animals (like polar bear) are treated badly enough when protection might inconvenience people or impede commerce, but when fish are being exploited or abused, their welfare ranks far below land animals, almost as if they don't count at all.

--Dean

P.S. This is the 200th post to the Fish School blog. Quite a milestone - thanks for reading!

Fish Training in the Classroom

There is a nice article out today describing how teachers are using our fish training kit to teach kids important lessons in school. Here is an excerpt:

"Teachers are catching on to the educational benefits of the kit and educators across the country are using the kit as an in class science project. The Kearney School of Science, Communications and Technology in San Diego, CA and science teacher Joanne "JJ" Johnson have implemented the program. They have 10 tanks setup in her classroom and students are divided into small groups of 3 or 4."

"Team members experience a wonderful sense of pride and accomplishment when they demonstrate the skill of their “fish stars” to an appreciative and often incredulous audience.

"Students have learned that patience and consistency are essential to effectively train animals", says Johnson "Generating excitement in the learning process is at the heart of teaching. Fish School is tailor-made for this”.

It is wonderful to see the excited faces of kids when the start to train their class fish.

--Dean

Customer Videos!

Check out the great videos sent in by happy R2 Fish School customers. I especially like this sent in by Kdiddy1538. For his class project, he trained his betta named Navin to swim through the hoop, tunnel and under the low limbo bar. He gives Comet a real run for his money! Here are both Navin and Comet in action. You can judge for yourself!

--Dean

Fish Trainer of the Day

I want to get a shout out to Mary and her efforts training her goldfish Blaze. Mary is an animal trainer, and blogs at her website Stale Cheerios. Here latest effort involves training Blaze to swim under a decorative bridge in his tank using the R2 Fish School Training Kit. She, like a few other serious fish trainers, is using a flashing light as a bridge signal to cue the behavior. Watch the video below. Great job Mary and Blaze!

--Dean

Fish Trainer of the Day

I just had to share this great video Emily is made of her fish training progress, using the R2 Fish School kit. She and her fish are making terrific progress, which isn't surprising since Emily is a dolphin trainer by trade.

This video, complete with captions and side effects, is just day three of their training efforts, and already her fish is swimming through the hoop, touching the soccer ball, and swimming under the limbo bar. Check it out.

Great job Emily!

--Dean

A Puppy Not a Guppy

Hey fish friends,

There is a cool new children's book just out by Holly Jahangiri called A Puppy, Not a Guppy.

We here at Fish School are especially excited about it because it parallels much of the origins of Fish School, and because Holly has been kind enough to show us early versions of her wonderful book, and ask for our expert advise in fish training. It has been great working with her.

The hero of the story is a young girl named Irma. Just like my kids a couple years ago, Irma wants a puppy but her parents think puppies are too much trouble, and instead buy her three guppies.

Irma is disappointed at first and to cheer her up, her parents suggest she try training her guppies to do tricks like a dog. Irma thinks its a silly idea, but is willing to give it a try - anything to make her fish more interesting. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but if you know the history of Fish School, you know the story has a happy ending!

The book is wonderfully illustrated by the talented artist Ryan Shaw, and even includes information about the real-life story of Fish School. Thanks for mentioning us Holly!

A Puppy, Not a Guppy is available at Amazon.com, and we here at Fish School give it two fins up!

--Dean

Why Not a Trained Fish Patrol?

The US Navy announced today that it would be using marine mammals to guard some of its naval bases, like Puget Sound, to protect against homeland terrorists. Why not used trained fish instead, like I proposed a while back in a white paper I sent to the ONR a while back?

I never heard back from them...

--Dean