Disturbing truths about dolphin theme parks

The Thursday, October 27, edition of ABC's Primetime should have been an eye-opener to millions of Americans who might be tempted to visit dolphin theme parks when on vacation.

First on the segment we see swim-with-dolphin theme parks. Then, as we see horrifying scenes of panicked dolphins being rounded up into small areas, and bloodied dolphins being strung up by their tails and thrown onto boats, reporter Chris Cuomo's voiceover tells us:

"'Primetime' discovered an ugly secret about these new parks. It may be shocking to learn that these most beloved creatures are captured from the wild, often in the most horrific ways. Look at this exclusive video from January 2004 of remote Taigi, Japan. This is the brutal enterprise of wild dolphin roundups. In a traditional dolphin hunt, fishermen use nets and loud noise to drive dolphins into a small cove.

Ric O'Barry, who once made a living catching and training the dolphins used on 'Flipper' and now fights against the marine mammal entertainment industry says:
"Even looking at the video doesn't do it justice, because you don't hear the screaming. You don't smell the death."

We see dolphin trainers in the water amongst the dolphins being rounded up to killed, and hear from Cuomo:

"These are dolphin trainers separating out the best of the catch for transfer to parks around the world. The rest ruthlessly slaughtered by fishermen for their meat."

(Close-up shot of a dead dolphin being dragged off.)

O'Barry, about other trainers: "They're there waiting in the wings, making deals, and buying some of the dolphins from these guys and rewarding them."

Cuomo: "Dolphins are ripped from their families, called pods. Take a mature dolphin mother and the rest of the pod loses its teacher. Take a dolphin that's too young and it may not ever learn how to survive on its own. This video shows a captured dolphin being secreted under cover of night to a Mexican dolphin park."

O'Barry: "These marine parks want you to believe that God put them there or they came out of the sky. They don't want to be seen capturing dolphins or having anything to do with captures."

Cuomo: "Many countries around the world, including the US and Mexico, restrict or ban taking dolphins from the wild. For a decade, US parks have relied on dolphins bred in captivity. But the growing demand for dolphins in other countries has spawned a lucrative trade of finding remote places to capture dolphins. Brokers charge up to $100,000 per animal."

Later in the segment Cuomo interviews a dolphin broker who says that by buying dolphins he is saving their lives since the fisherman would otherwise kill them for their meat and the souvenirs made out of their teeth.

O'Barry says, "That's ridiculous. How's he saving them? He might be saving that one, but he's contributing to the slaughter of 20,000 more by keeping them in business. He's not an environmentalist. He's a dolphin hunter. He's a dolphin dealer."

One concern about the segment was the suggestion that within the US, parks are not allowed to acquire wild caught dolphins, so the horror on the dolphin capture footage might not be relevant to the American experience. However this month, in Vancouver, we saw that the dolphin industry can find loopholes. Vancouver does not allow the importation of wild caught dolphins. But the Vancouver aquarium was able to import two dolphins who were deemed too injured to be rehabilitated for life in the wild. (See http://tinyurl.com/c9m7c for that story.) The Vancouver aquarium spent about $200,000 on the transport and purchase, from an aquarium in Japan. The Japanese aquarium has no laws against dolphin capture, so the transferred dolphins can be immediately replaced with healthy wild caught dolphins. Therefore anybody paying the price of admission at the Vancouver Aquarium, or at any other aquariums or theme parks that have made similar deals, are subsidizing the Taigi dolphin slaughter.
The Primetime story did a great job of showing us how.

Most of the Western public knows nothing of the history of the captive dolphins they visit on vacation in other lands. Primetime helped get out the word. Please make sure to thank the show for the segment. Primetime takes comments at
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=131877&page=1


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