A leap forward: Brookfield Zoo Chicago unveils $10 million upgrade to dolphin center

Kai surfaces from aqua-blue waters for a morning checkup with his trainer.

The oldest living bottlenose dolphin born at Brookfield Zoo Chicago, Kai knows the drill. The 29-year-old floats upside down while an animal care specialist traces a blood vessel in his tail flukes. On cue, Kai makes his signature whistle.

Their session goes swimmingly, though Kai could just as easily dart off to play with the steady streams of underwater bubbles in his newly revitalized zoo environment.

The zoo’s seven dolphins are back in their Seven Seas surroundings after a delicate, logistically complicated journey from the Minnesota Zoo. The dolphin group and zoo staff stayed up north during a $10 million renovation of their Brookfield home.

The Seven Seas building will reopen later this month as the zoo prepares for its centennial in 2034 with a sweeping master plan that promises to turn the park into a “living classroom.”

“We’ve got really just an incredible lineup of ideas and projects to come over the next 10 years,” said Michael Adkesson, the zoo’s president and CEO.

Making the move

After 15 months in Minnesota, the zoo’s dolphins — 50-year-old Lucky alone is about 500 pounds — returned to Seven Seas via three trailer trucks. The trip back involved more than 100 people from both zoos, water-filled dolphin transport carriers and at least one vet per truck.

“We move dolphins all the time within zoos and aquariums, but to move seven animals at the same time is a big undertaking,” Adkesson said.

Seven Seas now has a new roof, skylights, LED lighting and a climate-controlled air purifying system. The zoo team can attach artificial kelp and floating objects to new underwater rock formations to stimulate the dolphins’ natural behavior. Dolphins can use echolocation to find items hidden in a shallow sand pit.

Hydrophones, or underwater microphones, also have been installed in Seven Seas to record the dolphins’ vocalizations and how they interact with each other.

“Kai, one of our male dolphins, immediately loved the main habitat,” said Mark Gonka, the zoo’s associate director of marine mammal care and conservation. “He was exploring all over and checking out the rock work.”

The zoo’s “Dolphins in Action” demonstrations, which resume Friday, show how the playful mammals cooperate in their own care.

“We just started turning on some of the enrichment capabilities,” Gonka said, “and it took everything I had in me not to just turn the bubblers on all the way.”

‘Going strong’

Seven Seas also has shed its Caribbean-themed facade. Artificial plantings were added in the arena to resemble the mangrove trees and salt marshes in the Sarasota Bay area along Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Randy Wells and his team lead the zoo-funded Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, the world’s longest-running study of a wild dolphin population.

The research program and zoo have a mutually beneficial relationship. Devices that have been deployed on wild animals to study their movements and dive depths — Sarasota dolphins spend most of their lives in shallow waters — have been piloted with their zoo counterparts.

“We've got dolphins that were part of the program 55 years ago that are now great grandmothers and still going strong,” Adkesson said. “To be able to look at those reproductive successes, to be able to look at challenges and threats that face the populations, to be able to individually assist animals in need — it really makes for such an incredible program.”

Last year, Sarasota researchers rescued a dolphin calf after it became entangled in fishing line. Video monitors highlight their conservation work in an underwater Seven Seas viewing gallery reopening March 25.

“Even though we live in Chicago, and we're nowhere near the ocean coast, the stories are still just as important as they are when you're in those areas,” Adkesson said. “The things that go down our drain here in Chicago eventually find their way out into the ocean.”

What’s ahead

Zoo officials in June are set to roll out a “Next Century Plan” for new animal habitats and future conservation efforts. The zoo also has a new but familiar name and lion logo.

The 90-year-old institution and its parent organization, the Chicago Zoological Society, recently announced a “unified identity” — Brookfield Zoo Chicago — and tagline: “Connect. Care. Conserve.”

“The zoo becomes the connection point for caring about animals and wildlife and nature,” Adkesson said. “And then as we move people forward into that place of caring, we can move them into a place of conservation action.”

He sees that process happening in a gorilla conservation center well under construction and overlooking Tropical Forests. As part of a $66 million project, gorillas, orangutans and several species of South American monkeys will have nearly 3 acres of outdoor space.

“We want to drive in the direction of larger, more expansive habitats for the animals,” Adkesson said. “What we did with Tropical Forests we want to start replicating across the entire campus.”