Swim with the dolphins… No, thanks!
September 15th, 2007 by Barbara Soldi
If you have been around the Mayan Riviera you can not have missed the incredible amount of posters and leaflets advertising “Swim with the dolphins programs”. They are scattered around at every hotel reception, tourist information boot, café, bar and internet point. Not to mention the huge posters and boards promoting ‘eco-parks’ which display smiling ladies riding dolphins or cute kids patting their noses.
Luckily, I found a hotel displaying a leaflet by the Animal Welfare Institute titled “Dolphins are dying to amuse you – The truth about dolphin swim-with programs”. I wish I had seen it around more often.
I will summarize a few interesting points:
- Survivors of a brutal capture: Most performing dolphins are wild-caught, chased to exhaustion by power boats. They are ensnared in nets and hauled onto a capture vessel, or herded into shallow sea cages. A few die and the survivors endure hot sun and dehydration to their final destination: a void existence in a commercial facility.
- Taken from their families: Dolphins live in complex societies with their own cultures and dialects, maintaining close family ties. Individuals are violently removed with no hope of ever being reunited with their families. Young mothers, vital members of the community, are the most sought after.
- Forced to endure amputated lives: Captivity denies dolphins the ability to engage in species specific behaviours, such as swimming at 40 miles an hour and socializing. The stress of captivity and the lack of places to hide often results in stomach ulcers.
- Bored and aggressive: dolphins are naturally energetic, playful and inquisitive. But when tasked with entertaining tourists with no way to escape they often become bored and aggressive toward humans.
- An unnatural existence: wild dolphins do not ‘walk on water’, or jump through hoops or nod their heads on cue. These are forced artificial behaviours drilled by rote and food manipulation. The staple diet of captive dolphins is dead fish, a sad reality outside the wild.
If you love dolphins, please think twice before contributing to their capture and captivity.
You might assume dolphins’ perpetual smiles show contentment, but that is just how their faces are shaped; dead dolphins still ‘smile’.
Don’t swim with captive dolphins, let them stay wild.
September 16th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Thank you for finding our brochure and helping spread the word about this cruel form of “entertainment.” It is far more amazing to watch these incredible animals in their natural surroundings interacting with others of their own species.
If you would like more of these brochures to share please visit our website and let me know.
Thanks again, Chris
Animal Welfare Institute
September 18th, 2007 at 12:16 am
It was a pleasure Chris, keep up the great work!
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Thank you for expressing your views Barbara and Chris. I am 100% in agreement with you.
A few thoughts of my own on the subject:
I talk to Tourists every day and for many people, families especially, the dolphin ‘experience’ is a ‘must do’ and one of their most cherished experiences of their vacations. The real enemy here is the demand for these programs. We can only assume and hope that the consumers of this product are ignorant of it’s impact. There is a great deal of misinformation given out by the operators to “address the concerns” of the tourists such as that the dolphins are captive bred. While certainly many are it is equally certain and known that many are wild captured.
I am a little hesitant myself to speak out in this public forum because the operators of these businesses have been known to use gangster like approaches against vocal protesters living here so I should be more prudent and cautious about what I say but I can’t resist a soap box when I see one. This is a topic about which I am a bit passionate.
For a year I worked in a business that looked out directly at a dolphin enclosure where they were running one of these programs so I have had my fill of it and then some.
People are paying about $40 extra for about 5 seconds of riding on a dolphins nose, pretty incredible when you think about it.
The amount of income being generated by the dolphin programs is nothing short of staggering so there is a lot at stake here. Every activity has to compete for the tourist’s time and money, so there are other commercial implications that are somewhat complex. In my opinion, it is another way in which a higher percentage of the tourist dollars is being funneled into to the hands of those who are already extremely wealthy.
The only feasible way to change this situation is through education in the home environment of the tourists through television, newspaper articles etc. and for that, I think that environmental and wildlife protection groups will have to get interested and involved.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Thanks for adding your voice to this conversation Tim, and for risking gangster like approaches…
In an ideal world business should be more concerned with ethics and less with profits, but if unfortunately we can not expect an ethical behaviour by most business people, there is no doubt that we can make a massive difference as ‘informed and responsible consumers’. As you pointed out, the demand is the enemy to fight, and the tourists education at home is essential.
In the past year Greenpeace has been promoting a massive campaign against illegal whaling I have been particularly interested in, creating a special Ocean defenders section on their website and an online community involving hundreds of thousands of people all around the world.
It has been a very ambitious campaign if you consider the huge international interests involved, but it was organized extremely well with the use of the Internet as global-social network for coordinating the campaign by spreading the word, posting information, recruiting volunteers and monitoring the effects.
It had an incredibly strong impact world-wide and put real pressure on corporations, governments, banks and the UN itself.
By checking the Greenpeace Mexican site I have found an article about the publication of Delfinarios, a book which presents the dark side of these Swim with the dolphins programs. We should all try to raise awareness about these dolphins shows internationally, maybe contacting our local Greenpeace website proposing some organised action to inform tourists and discourage them from contributing with their money to the development of such a cruel business.
I will try to post something also on ecotourism sites and forums and invite our readers to do the same, reporting any successful action!
November 10th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Hello,
The message really needs to begin at home before the tourists leave on their vacations. I live in a small Ontario, Canada town and working at getting the message out to ‘Letters to the Editor’ across as many of the newspapers in small, medium towns and cities. If we all can even hit the small/mid size town paper forum it will be read by many, including the teachers at schools who can generate the interest among the kids. I think if kids were told the truth about these programs they would steer their parents away from them. Below is the letter I’ve been sending:
Dear Editor,
WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS?
Now that the season for taking southern sun vacations and cruises is upon us, I would like to appeal to your readers to make an informed decision and choose not to patronize any ‘Swim with Dolphin’ attractions. This growing tourist business advertises to unknowing northern tourists by offering a ‘magical’ or ‘natural’ or ‘educational’ encounter. Studies have proven the ‘Swim With Dolphin’ trade is devastating to the dolphins. It’s unregulated, rips dolphins from their life-long families, and confines these intelligent animals in an unnatural and stressful environment. Cages that are misleadingly called ‘Lagoons’. If the dolphin is a Global Symbol of freedom and humanity’s connection to the oceans & environment then please compare the ethics of these tourist (and dolphin) traps to your own values and beliefs. Make a difference rather than make this magnificent animal provide you with entertainment! By drawing the line beyond our own backyard it’s a step closer to perhaps redrawing the line a little closer to home.
For further info go to Google.com and search on: Is Swim With Dolphins Cruel?
Thanks,
Kathy Harker