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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| Putting Dolphin Discovery leaflets where they belong |
