Dolphin swims have become a lucrative industry for marine parks

There is an unfortunate article on swim-with-dolphin programs on the front page of the Thursday June 23 Miami Herald, headed "Close-ups with dolphins boost park's cash flow. Want to be a dolphin trainer for a day? That will be $650, please. Dolphin swims have become a lucrative industry for marine parks."

It opens:
"Dolphins belong to the Delphindaefamily, but put them in a pool with tourists and they resemble a far more coveted species: the cash cow.
Theater of the Sea in Islamorada charges $150 for a 30-minute dolphin swim. Petting one costs $15 at the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key; volunteering there as a trainer costs $650. The Miami Seaquarium's dolphin swims generate more than $1 million a year -- as much as comes in from the park's gift shops and souvenir stands.
So it's no surprise face-to-fin encounters have emerged as a significant growth industry.
In a decade, the United States went from having four places to swim with the dolphins to more than two dozen. At least seven swim facilities have opened in the Caribbean since 2000, according to Humane Society estimates, with plans for a dozen or more in the works."

Andrew Hertz, the Seaquarium's general manager, says that before the swims the park had an "underutilized resource" in its dolphins.

The article describes how the dolphin swims work, tells us that the dolphins are not forced to swim with people (presumably they would be welcome to spend their days, instead, doing nothing alone in a tank) and, sadly, ends with this promotional line from a patron, ''So far, it was the most expensive thing we've done. But it was worth it.''

The article tells us "the United States has not allowed dolphin captures for more than a decade" (so any dolphins over ten were likely wrenched from their families and freedom into lives as slaves to human entertainment) but that "other countries sanction open-water catches" and that "Cuba is considered the Caribbean's leading wild-dolphin provider." Unfortunately it does not spell out what animal advocates know -- that to participate in a dolphin-swim program while on vacation outside of the US is to directly support the horror of dolphin capture. (More on that below.)

The animal rights point of view is given a line or two in this lengthy article. We read:
'''Dolphins don't like swimming with people,' said Russ Rector, a former dolphin trainer turned activist who helps run the parody site http://www.miamiseaprison.com"

It is a site well worth checking out.

Also worth checking out is Ric O'Barry's site (Ric is a former Flipper trainer) http://www.dolphinproject.org/

Here is a description of dolphin capture from that website:
"One Voice succeeded in videotaping the gruesome scene as dolphin trainers, working side by side with the Taiji fishermen, drove a pod of more than 100 bottlenose dolphins into the killing lagoon to select the ones that fit the desired criteria for public display. The trainers killed at least four dolphins in the selection process. ... Meanwhile, the dolphin trainers let the fishermen kill all the dolphins they didn't want. There were several very small babies in the pod. They still depended on their mothers‚ milk for survival and were too young to train. So the fishermen killed them, and the dolphin trainers did absolutely nothing to help them. The dolphins cried as the fishermen slashed them with hooks and knives and the lagoon filled with their blood..."

You can read the Miami Herald's front page fluff piece on the swim-with-dolphin industry at:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/11961753.htm

And you can send a letter to the editor by going to:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/contact_us/feedback_np1/
Choose "letter to the editor" from the pull-down menu.


(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. If you forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts, please do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)