Dolphin Discovery, Cayman: EMPTY THE TANKS

Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures." ~ Dalai Lama

There are those who have never seen these creatures in the wild. They see them in their bank accounts. They profit from the destruction of our oceans and cruelty to animals; taking exactly what they want with no thought or respect for the impact it will have.

Grand Cayman is yet another example of a small island exploiting the creatures in the surrounding ocean to make money. Cayman is only 100 square miles big and yet it is home to two Dolphin parks.

But, that dolphin you see at Dolphin Discovery is not a dolphin. 

It looks just like one but the captive dolphin is an artificial representation of the real animal. Everything that constitutes a dolphin has been taken from it; nothing it does is what a dolphin should be doing. It has been conditioned to eat dead fish and gelatin rather than hunt live prey in the wild, it has been bribed into performing tricks which is an unnatural behaviour and imprisoned in a pool rather than swimming up to 100 miles a day in the wild.

Dolphin Discovery, Grand Cayman

Marine parks, such as Dolphin Discovery, claim that first-hand experience with captive animals is essential to build respect for nature. Scientific studies say otherwise: people show the same appreciation for nature whether going to marine parks or not. 

Dolphin memories? Dolphin nightmares more like

Research and observations in recent years have revealed that whales and dolphins not only have the ability to learn as individuals, but those individuals can then pass their new knowledge onto others which is a rare intelligence in the animal kingdom.  At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada, the world's biggest science conference it was decided that dolphins should be treated as non-human "persons", with their rights to life and liberty respected. They believe dolphins and whales are sufficiently intelligent to justify the same ethical considerations as humans.

"They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom." ~Braveheart

They deserve freedom too

To humans, freedom is the ultimate right, and we’ll fight for it to our deaths. However, suffering under confinement is shared by whales and dolphins, too. Unlike many animals that live longer in captivity than in the wild, in the case of these marine mammals it’s the other way round. Whales and dolphins are wide-ranging, with large extended families and often huge social groups, in which individuals are dependent upon each other. Remove them from both these aspects of their lives, and the claustrophobic effects upon them can become catastrophic. Depression, physical illness and aberrant behaviour have all been documented. In addition, those taken into captivity from the wild are not the only ones that suffer. The groups that are left behind may depend upon them for many social reasons, and vital bonds necessary for dolphin survival can be broken as key members are taken from family groups.

Those who have swam with dolphins, or had dolphin-assisted therapy, often say that the dolphins themselves seem so happy. Sadly, but understandably, they are misunderstanding the situation. The apparent smile on the faces of dolphins is actually just a physicality, not an emotive response. It remains there as part of dolphin anatomy, no matter how sad, upset or ill they may be. 

As Ric O'Barry said: “A dolphin's smile is the greatest deception. It creates the illusion that they're always happy.”

As humans, we are slaughtering and keeping these highly intelligent animals as prisoners, all in the name of ‘entertainment’; to line the pockets of corporations such as Dolphin Discovery. I believe that future generations are going to look back on us as barbarians, in the same way we now look back on dictators in world wars. But the worst part is that we know what we’re doing and yet we’re still allowing it to happen. So if you, like many others, have always dreamt of swimming with dolphins go and see them in the ocean and save your money, because marine parks should not be endorsed and dolphins don’t belong in swimming pools.

Putting Dolphin Discovery leaflets where they belong