"Diviner than the Dolphin is nothing yet created for indeed they were aforetime men and lived in cities along with the mortals. They exchanged the land for the sea and put on the form of fishes. But, even now, the righteous spirit of men in them preserves human thought and human deeds."
"Listen to the voice of a Dolphin, and you shall learn the secret to mankinds surivival"
...PEACE!...
Mallory Watson - 1998
Art By Carlos Aleman
SENTENCED TO DEATH !
"Why Do Humans Want To Remove Me From The Ocean Of My Birth, To Enslave Me Until The Day That I Die ?
The bottlenose dolphin is the most commonly held cetacean in captivity. Those who deny the threat posed by captivity to the survival of indivdual whales and dolphins need only look at the mounting death tolls revealed by recent statistics.
Think about this...One day your swimming with your family that you hold close to your heart. Men in boats want nothing more than to capture you and bring you into their ruthless environment and sentence you to a long, slow painful death. All the while not caring anything about your or your family, just the money and the lust for greed that they have. You never bothered anyone..never even seen a man.
The men are ruthless and uncaring and their touch is rough!
You are about to be forcefully taken, against your will, against God's will. You will never see your loving family or the ocean where you were born again!You are relocated and thrown into a strange environment, one they say is now your new home. Everything you learned as a young dolphin is taken away. Your sad and confused. Your family, the sounds of the ocean, plant and animal life and the desire to swim in a straight line...they're all gone now. Even your world of sound is no longer the same.
Your new life is one of swimming in circles, performing several shows a day, and being fed dead fish and vitamins. Day after day, the same old thing.Why don't they care what they are doing to you? They don't truly understand your life or your species. If they did they wouldn't inflict this upon you. Do they not know that? Why are we all dying so fast? We suffer no less than humans. Surely I will die here...maybe one day someone will help me! Dolphins are innocent sufferers in a hell of our making!
53% of those dolphins who survive the violent capture die within 90 days.
The average life span of a dolphin in the wild is 45 years; yet half of all captured dolphins die within their first two years of captivity. The survivors last an average of only 5 years in captivity.
Every seven years, half of all dolphins in captivity die from capture shock, pneumonia, intestinal disease, ulcers, chlorine poisioning, and other stress-related illnesses. To the captive dolphin industry, these facts are accepted as routine operating expenses.
In many tanks the water is full of chemicals as well as bacteria, causing many health problems in dolphins including blindness.
When a baby dolphin is born in captivity, the news is usually kept secret until the calf shows signs of survival. Although marine parks do breed in captivity, the birth rate is not nearly as successful as the one in the wild, with high mortality rates.
Dolphins in the wild may travel up to one hundred miles a day, reaching speeds up to 30 miles per hour and diving several hundred feet deep, using their echolocation abilities for navigation. The concrete walls of the tanks where these animals are kept in captivity inhibit their natural accoustic ablities.
Many marine parks subject their mammals to hunger so they will perform for their food. Jumping through hoops, tailwalking and playing ball are trained behaviors that do not occur in the wild.
Confined animals who abuse themselves (banging their heads against the walls) are creating stimuli which their environment cannot supply. Dolphins in captivity tend to develop stereo-typical behaviors (swimming in a repetitive circle pattern, with eyes closed and in silence) because of boredom and confinement. This is equivalent to the swaying and pacing of primates, lions, tigers and bears confined in cages.
Dolphins are predators of fish and spend up to half of their time in the wild hunting for food. Supplying dead fish results in less exercise and lack of mental stimulation, thus causing boredom.
When trapped together, males often become agitated and domineering. This creates pecking orders (unknown in the wild) and unprovoked attacks on each other and the trainers. In the ocean, although fights are not unknown, the wild dolphins have a chance to escape.
Below Are Some Opinions And Thoughts Of Experts Regarding Captivity
Peter Hamilton, executive director of Lifeforce International, says that displaying whales in public aquariums, "teaches (children) that it's OK for us to imprision whales and dolphins just for our amusement." Hamilton's organization opposes the use of animals for experimentation, entertainment and as food.
Jacques Coustea of the Coustea Society - "Education about the marine environment takes place in aquariums
each day. There is no queston that public awareness and concern about dolphins and whales has grown from watching them perform in public aquariums." However, world renowned marine expert Cousteau objects to the entertainment - leads to education method.
"I am sincerely against them as circus animals, and therefore I am against the creation of commercial exhibits of live marine mammals." In 1958, Coustea witnessed an incident where two dolphins killed themselves by swimming full speed into the walls of their tank. The Cousteau Society opened an Ocean Park in Paris, France, with no captive animals. It is a marine museum and it features a life-size 90-foot Blue whale.
"This world may never change the way it's been,
And all the way of war can't change it back again.
And I've been searchin' for the dolphin in the sea,
Sometimes I wonder do you think of me".
- Fred Neil, "THE DOLPHIN SONG"
- We Need To Speak For Those That Can't Speak !
Zoocheck Of Canada
HSUS - Programs
View Captive Dolphin Pictures - Have Tissues Handy !
