|
Why dolphins should remain free
By Helene O'Barry
Dolphins have evolved over millions of years, adapting perfectly to life in the ocean. They are intelligent, social and self-aware, exhibiting evidence of a highly developed emotional sense. Imagine the panic dolphins must experience as they are yanked from the ocean, forever separated from their world of sound, their pod members, and their ability to swim freely. |
Captures of dolphins are traumatic and stressful and can result in injury and death of dolphins. During the capture, the strong social bonds the dolphins have enjoyed and nurtured for years are abruptly and permanently destroyed.The number of dolphins that die during capture operations or shortly thereafter are never revealed in dolphinariums or swim-with-dolphins programs. Some facilities even claim their dolphins were "rescued" from the ocean and cannot be released. This claim is almost invariably false.
Dolphin Drive Hunts take place in some parts of the world, including Japan and the Solomon Islands. Many captive dolphins now available from dolphin traffickers were caught in dolphin drive hunts where entire families and schools of dolphins are driven into shallow water. |
|
Only the best-looking specimens are chosen for captivity (usually young females without scars or blemishes). The rest of the dolphins are cruelly slaughtered and processed into meat for meat for human consumption. In Japan, a dolphin killer can get $6-700 for a dolphin carcass, whereas a live dolphin can bring the catcher as much as $100-150,000 on the world market. The public will be shocked to know that some members of the captive dolphin industry are fuelling the dolphin drive hunt by making it tremendously profitable.
Training of dolphins is often deliberately misrepresented by the captive dolphin industry to make it look as if dolphins perform because they like it. In order to train dolphins to perform inane circus tricks, the trainer must first obtain complete control over them. This is accomplished by taking advantage of the captive dolphins' powerless predicament: They depend totally on their keepers to be fed. Once the hungry dolphins have surrendered to eating dead fish, the trainer teaches them that only when they perform a desired behavior; such as waving at the audience or tail walking, do they receive their reward: a fish. This is how abnormal behaviors are enforced in a dolphin. The captivity industry calls this training method "positive reward." From the dolphin's perspective, however, it's food control.
The dolphin show does represent a form of education but it's a form of bad education in that it teaches millions of people that human supremacy over nature is a good thing. How can the spectators learn anything about the true nature of dolphins when the captive dolphins are trained in unnatural behaviors, mere circus tricks that these once-wild, opportunistic foragers of the oceans are performing for food rewards of dead fish? And how are the spectators supposed to become aware of the importance of preserving dolphins in nature when the dolphins they are watching have been either stolen from nature, kicking and screaming, or were born in captivity and have never seen the ocean? Any intelligent person watching dolphins perform circus tricks must conclude that this is about one thing only: casual amusement at the expense of the dolphins.
Dolphin-Assisted-Therapy has become a lucrative business over the last years and presents a serious threat to the welfare of dolphins in that it creates further captures, trade, and captive breeding of dolphins worldwide. Furthermore, it takes advantage of desperate and vulnerable parents who pay large sums of money to give their ill or disabled children what the multi-billion-dollar dolphin captivity industry advertises as a "life enhancing dolphin experience." There is no scientific evidence to substantiate the claim that spending time in a tank or sea enclosure with dolphins has a healing effect on ill and disabled people.
In captivity dolphins are restricted to the size of their tank or enclosure. They can only swim a few feet before a wall or a fence stops them, and they cannot dive to depths, which in the wild is a natural behavior. Forever separated from their pod members and vast ocean world, most captive dolphins are confined in minuscule tanks containing chemically treated artificial seawater. Dolphins in a tank are severely restricted in using their sonar. Depriving dolphins of using their highly developed sonar is one of the most damaging aspects of captivity. It is much like forcing a person to wear a blindfold for the rest of his life.
Captivity used to conserve dolphins is another false concept perpetuated by the captivity industry. There is no scientific evidence to support the claim that the capture and confinement of wild animals help conserve them as a species. Since the world's first formal dolphin show opened in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1938, hundreds of dolphins have been captured from the wild and trained to perform silly circus tricks. When the dolphins died, the captivity industry captured more. These are disposable dolphins for our disposable society, and to call them ambassadors is simply an obviously desperate attempt at sanitizing the exploitation of these animals.
Captive breeding is used by the dolphin captivity industry to sanitize the confinement of dolphins, as if these dolphins do not possess the same physiological needs as their wild co-species and are therefore suitable for lifelong confinement in an unnatural environment. But dolphins born in captivity possess the exact same characteristics as those born in nature. Captivity violates a dolphin’s most fundamental behavioral requirements, regardless of whether the dolphin was captured from the wild or born in captivity.
The Save Japan Dolphins Coalition (Animal Welfare Institute, Elsa Nature Conservancy Japan, In Defense of Animals and Earth Island Institute) opposes the capture of dolphins for captivity. Dolphins should be allowed to remain free and wild in the oceans where they belong.
|
