A Captive Audience, by Anton Janulis
Dolphins and humans have long had a special relationship. Children light up when they hear the word “dolphin,” and adults react like kids when someone on the beach shouts, “Look, a dolphin!” And because of the mammal’s cuddly demeanor and friendly behavior, popular culture is rife with tales of happy interaction between humans and dolphins—think Flipper—and swim-with-dolphins attractions are among the most popular animal experiences available to the public. But as these mammals become a must-have item for some parks and attractions, recent developments have stirred heated discussion of animal captivity, hunting, and trade.

Dolphin Safe
In the past two decades, many attempts have been made to stem the harming of dolphins by large-scale tuna fishing and the use of powerful sonar (which can cause a dolphin or whale to beach itself) used by the U.S. Navy. The navy has agreed to limit its sonar testing to deeper waters, and “dolphin safe” has become a watchword in tuna marketing. Although there continues to be much argument about just how safe constitutes “dolphin-safe,” the issue seems quite clear: We wish to protect dolphins from tuna fishing and other dangers, in which they are accidental victims. But in the area of aquatic attractions, where people want to see and learn about the animals, the issues become more complicated. Whether or not it is right to keep such animals in captivity, and how they are captured and sold, became a hot issue after an incident that occurred in the fall of 2003.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the problem began when Robert Satu, a Solomon Islands village chief who claimed to have the ability to summon dolphins, and a Canadian business partner named Christopher Porter captured 28 dolphins at one time. Satu says he once used this skill to hunt dolphins for food, but he has given up killing dolphins, partly out of a sense that he must now protect them. But he also knows live dolphins have become worth quite a bit of money.

Satu and Porter sold the captured dolphins to Parcque Nizuc in Cancún, Mexico. The capture and subsequent transfer of the dolphins—the largest, according to the Los Angeles Times, ever recorded by international regulators—and the events that followed have led to as much controversy as the eating of dolphins once did.

After making the flight suspended in web harnesses inside water tanks, the dolphins were transferred to shallow sea-pens. Within a week, one of the dolphins, a 15-year-old female, had died, apparently of causes related to the stress of her 12,500-mile move from Guadalcanal. Those involved with the capture and sale of the dolphins insisted that they complied with all existing international regulations, but some activists have claimed that the Mexican government was pressured into permitting the transport without waiting to get all the necessary statistics concerning the population of dolphins around the Solomon Islands, and that the holding pens are too shallow for the dolphins, who need to be able to dive to avoid being burned by the sun. This death led to the call for banning the import of dolphins into Mexico. The capture of wild dolphins off the coast of Mexico has already been banned, but there were calls to return these dolphins to the wild as well.

One activist calling for the return of the dolphins to the wild is Richard O’Barry, who used to be the trainer for Flipper, the dolphin of the television series. O’Barry had a change of heart about the relationship between humans and dolphins and now works for the release of as many dolphins as possible. He told the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service that the Solomon Islands capture was “so big and so bizarre that [the authorities] have to do something.” O’Barry has visited the park several times, and he continues to worry about the surviving dolphins.

The American amusement industry has uniformly condemned the Solomon Islands sale, and representatives point out that, whatever develops with Mexican law, regulations that keep dolphins and marine mammals safe are much stricter in the United States than anywhere else. Marilee Menard, executive director of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums, which represents 95 percent of the marine mammals in the United States, has said that the animals are “hugely regulated, even more than endangered species.” Few other animal attractions have to meet the standards that marine mammal attractions must meet. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, plus several other groups, such as the Alliance, and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, regulates these parks. Menard went on to say that the Alliance had specifically forbidden its members from purchasing dolphins from the Solomon Islands capture.

As early as 1995, the Alliance had established “negotiated rule-making” under which it enacted 13 of 18 proposed changes to the regulations governing marine mammal parks. “The Alliance goes even higher than the U.S. government standards for the care of marine mammals,” Menard says. In light of the aftermath of the Solomon Islands capture, other countries may be following the lead of the United States, she says. Ultimately, it seems that, whatever else may happen in the international regulation of the dolphin or whale trade, the parks in the United States are several steps ahead of the grade. When asked if she anticipated any changes to the laws in the United States, Menard said, “absolutely not.”

Controversy of Captivity
International trade is largely governed by treaties such as CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, and the diplomatic pressure nations exert on each other. After the Solomon Islands capture, according to the New Zealand Herald, Mexico agreed to halt the importation of dolphins from the South Pacific. But a problem remains for parks like Nizuc—the importation of such dolphins is very important to their livelihood. Tourists will pay as much as $100 to swim with dolphins, and the more dolphins a park has, the more swimming tourists may do. The Mexican Association of Amusement Parks (AMAP) has gone before the Mexican Congress to educate it about the potential loss of jobs and revenue that such a ban might mean. Meanwhile, some activists are calling for the return of the captured dolphins to the wild. While expensive, that may yet be possible for the Solomon Islands dolphins, as they haven’t been in captivity for very long.

The problems associated with returning captive animals to the wild, especially animals as intelligent and socialized as cetaceans, is well illustrated by the example of Keiko—the killer whale, or orca, who starred in the Free Willy films. He had been captured in 1979 at the age of two and spent many years at a marine park in Mexico. In 1993 a campaign began to have Keiko released into the wild. Finally, he was released in the summer of 2002 near Greenland after being trained to catch fish on his own. But in December of 2003, Keiko died near Norway of pneumonia. According to Ron Magill, communications director at the Miami Metro Zoo, “The causes of Keiko’s death are speculative. Keiko died of natural causes, but many naturalists warned that such a thing would happen. Keiko was a highly socialized animal, and he sought human contact. Returning him to the wild was like dropping a boy who had been raised in a padded room into the middle of Times Square.” All of which suggests that Keiko might have lived longer had he not been returned to the wild, where the stress of his new environment may well have made him susceptible to disease.

Keiko’s release is partly the result of a popular belief that no animals should be kept captive. Given the nature of highly intelligent animals, like higher primates and elephants and cetaceans, this seems like a winning argument. But once again, the issue is a complicated one. Parcque Nizuc makes the claim that its swim-with-the-dolphins program is an important tool for educating the public, and Magill agrees. Wildlife parks in general are, he says, “absolutely fundamental to educating the public. And in that way they are a tremendous service not just to the public, but to wildlife. The passion of somebody working in the field to help these animals was very likely sparked by a trip to a park or an aquarium.” However, Magill feels that this ability to educate the public comes with a burden: “No institution should feel entitled to any animals it wants. It should earn that right.”

Magill also points out that, besides the illegality of bringing dolphins captured in the wild here to the States, a capture like the one in the Solomons is simply unnecessary. “In U.S. zoos, most animals are captive born. It is almost unheard of to take animals out of the wild these days. It simply isn’t necessary. Usually, when an animal is taken from the wild, it is in response to a plan to develop a certain wild area, and zoos are called in to save what wildlife they can.” Which means that the needs of our aquatic parks can be met by the dolphins we already have.

“The genetic health of captive populations is helped by the Species Survival Plan (SSP),” continues Magill. “It’s kind of like a computer dating service. It ensures the careful mating
of animals in zoos. Some animals that have very restricted gene pools may be bred in different ways. For instance, instead of breeding only captive black rhinos, and instead of capturing wild ones, a wild one will be sedated, and a sample of sperm will be taken to artificially inseminate animals in the zoo. It is as good as having the new rhino, because it is a whole new blood-line.” Marine mammals are additionally protected in this matter by the Alliance of Marine Mammals Population Management Task Force, which works with, and much like, the SSP.

One piece of the puzzle
In the end, the two sides on this issue may not always agree. What seems clear is that the United States. will continue to be a model for how to regulate marine attractions, and that people will continue to want to see dolphins. According to Magill, this disagreement is good for the animals and for the industry. We need the parks and aquariums, because we need to be able to see dolphins, and we also need people who ask really tough questions of the custodians of these animals, he says.

The conversation between park and zoo managers and activists is part of what keeps the attractions and the animals healthy. “Much good is done by animal activists,” he says. “They set the bar real high, and the bar can’t be high enough for these animals. They exert constant pressure to keep the animals in the best exhibits. Enormous pressure—which is all to the good. But there has to be compromise. Extremism in any form is dangerous. You can’t look at one piece of the puzzle.”