[Series] The Cost of Wildlife Tourism - Dolphins
In recent years, we have seen a rise in dolphin tourism in Asia. In parts attributed by the boom of social media in the past decade, encounters with dolphins have become increasingly popular. Businesses all around the world expanded into the realm of dolphin tourism as it attracted lucrative income from Instagrammers and Tiktokers alike; each competing to snap a more like-worthy photo to post on social media.
However, looking beyond the glamour of social media lies abused dolphins, forced to live short isolated lives in captivity away from their natural habitat and family, unable to exhibit their natural behaviours.
We ask you to bear in mind the famous Brambell’s Five Freedoms of animal welfare whilst reading this article: Are dolphins in captivity free from hunger and thirst? Are dolphins in captivity free from discomfort? Are dolphins in captivity free from pain, injury or disease? Are dolphins in captivity free to express normal behaviour? Are dolphins in captivity free from fear and distress?
Background Facts on Dolphins
Dolphins are highly intelligent and sensitive mammals. They form deep life-long social bonds with each other whilst living in tight-knit groups called “pods” in open ocean. There are many species of dolphins, and up to 44 are known to date.
Like humans, dolphins have complex social structures. Each dolphin is appreciated as a member of a larger family and each plays an integral role in their pods. In fact, each dolphin has their own distinct personality and each dolphin has its own name in the form of a signature whistle. Skills and knowledge are passed down from elders to the young much like us.
Although dolphins as a species do not have a universal language, studies have shown that they communicate through squeaks, whistles and clicks specific to a certain pod. As a species that is biologically engineered to thrive in big open oceans, dolphins swim up to 100 miles a day with their pods whilst also diving into great depths in a day. They use sonars called echolocation in their daily lives from tracking preys to navigating their surroundings.
How Dolphins are Captured
Dolphins are torn from their tight-knit pods and family. They are then sold to the dolphin tourism industry. Often this results in infant dolphins being torn away from their mothers who in their natural environment would stick together for 3 – 6 years. Dolphins are usually captured by fishermen circling pods into shallow water or trapping them into coves or bays, causing great distress and sometimes even deaths to the pod.
Dolphins are then loaded into small boxes and begin their journey to their ultimate buyers. This stressful experience of travelling long hours on planes and trucks is extremely gruelling and sadly dolphins die along this journey.
In Japan, for 6 months each year, hunters from the village of Taiji ambush schools of dolphins to shallow waters where they are killed by stabbing. Many are killed as they are seen as pests, but the other major driving force for this practice is the lucrative business to capture and supply dolphins that are “pretty” for the dolphin tourism industry. Not only are the young and “pretty” ones are captured, they are forced to witness the slaughtering of the rest of their pod. Dolphins have an extremely high intellect and can understand that their pod members are being slaughtered. This instils a huge amount of fear in them and causes them a lot of stress.
Dolphins in Captivity
After being captured, dolphins from different families and different pods are forced to live in unfamiliar and often incompatible groups who “speak” different languages. This makes it difficult for them to communicate with each other. This is coupled with living in a cramped and shallow enclosures of barren concrete surroundings that lack stimulations and hiding places. This environment of inescapability creates immense amount of routine stress to the captured dolphins. The small and shallow enclosures do not allow dolphins to exhibit their natural instinct to swim vast distance and dive great depths each day.
During captivity, dolphins are kept on a limited diet of dead fish, which is both unnatural and insufficient for these mammals to thrive. Training via food deprivation is the most common method used to motivate dolphins to perform in shows, to engage cooperatively in “swimming-with-dolphins” programmes and to comply with trainers’ orders. Dolphins earn little fish treats as rewards after the comply. Dolphins in captivity have been shown to have a much shorter life-span and a tendency to develop a wide range of mental illnesses including depression, self-harm behaviours and aggression.
Dolphins kept in tanks for viewing through underwater tank glass are persistently subjected to visitor’s banging and knocking on the glass to get their attention. This innocuous action is highly distressing to dolphins for the simple reason that banging and knocking on the tank glass translates to vibrations that is intrusive to dolphin’s hearing. Dolphins also often chew on their tank walls out of frustration causing compromised teeth.
Swimming-with-Dolphins Attractions
Swimming with dolphins and petting dolphins in chlorine-filled pools are by far the most popular activity of dolphin tourism. Dolphins kept in captivity are housed in shallow and cramped enclosures, trapped and forced to interact with hordes of paying visitors.
Unbeknownst to many partakers, with human interaction comes illnesses that can be passed onto dolphins, ranging from viral and bacterial infections to fungal infections. To tackle this issue, many of the interactive pools have to be heavily chlorinated. Having to be exposed to chlorinated pools day in and day out cause burns to dolphins’ eyes and more often than not, causes irreversible damage to their eyesight. Giving kisses, being grasped and other interactions with visitors also result in their mouths (“rostrums”) becoming raw.
Dolphin trainings for shows and swimming-with-dolphins programmes usually involve bullying tactics, aggravating the already heightened social tension amongst the artificial social group they are forced into. Such stressful living environment often causes dolphins to become aggressive towards each other, trainers and visitors. In the wild, when clashed with an aggressor, dolphins often swim away. However, when clashing with an aggressor in a tank, they cannot swim away, which is why dolphins in captivity often bear scars that tell the story.
Dolphins Theatrical Performances
Growing up, we were taught that dolphins are born to perform in circus stadiums and that they actually enjoy performing with their trainers. In fact, many of us first learnt of dolphins through pictures and drawings portraying dolphins jumping through hoops and with trainers surfing on their rostrums. We sadly were not educated at all about dolphins in their natural habitat.
In many dolphin attractions, theatrical performances are used as a form of crowd control of the park. Dolphins captured for theatrical performances often suffer from a wide range of ailment as a direct result of the performances, ranging from physical skin abrasions on their rostrums to irreversible damage to the dolphin’s lower jaw which has to support a trainer’s full weight during performances. All of these are unnatural to their biological anatomy and natural behaviour. On top of causing dolphins to suffer for a tourist’s enjoyment, such performances also reinforce a false notion of how to treat animals correctly to the general public.
Hong Kong’s Ocean Park
One of Hong Kong’s most prominent and popular tourist attractions, Ocean Park, which first opened its front gates in 1977, may unfortunately be creating a demand for mainland China-based dolphinariums and wildlife entertainment venue, looking to capitalize on what is an incredibly lucrative business. Although a lot has been made of dolphin hunters and the slaughter of these animals for meat, the real money is in capturing these dolphins alive and selling them to marine parks such as Ocean Park and across the world. Gary Stokes, founder and director of ocean conservation charity OceansAsia, has said that without the demand for captive dolphins, there would not be enough money to justify the drive hunts of dolphins. According to the International Marine Mammal Project, each dolphin can be sold for as high a price as HKD$1.1 million in some case, with dolphin meat bringing in a mere HKD$4000 on average.
The dolphin trade is riddled with regulatory loopholes. In Japan, it is illegal to sell dolphins in captivity. In China, it is illegal to do so domestically, but dolphinariums are allowed to import the animals. With no domestic market, the Japanese hunters are more than happy to supply dolphins to Mainland China.
Mainland Chinese businesses see Ocean Park as a money making success. Mainland visitors comprise of approximately half of the yearly foot traffic through the park, spending large amounts of money to see the wide variety of aquatic creatures housed there. According to Ocean Park’s official website, they state that 30% of its initial dolphin population were imported from the wild in Indonesia between 1987 and 1997, however no additional information is provided to account for the remaining 70%, likely to be bred
Only last month, the Hong Kong Government approved Ocean Park’s request for a HK$5.4 billion dollar bailout package. Despite insisting that their dolphin and sea lion shows would be removed and replaced with 26 new amusement rides, no precise details have been formulated. Unfortunately, as long as marine parks such as Ocean Park, and other mainland Chinese ventures exist and continue to make money, there will always be a necessary demand for the capture and sale of dolphins.
Progressions in Asia
In 2013, India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests declared in a statement that cetaceans (dolphins and whales) are highly intelligent and sensitive and “should be seen as ‘non-human person’ and as such should have their own specific rights”. The Ministry advised state governments to abolish the use of dolphins in dolphinariums or other entertainments that involve the captivity of dolphins. This resulted in many changes in India, including the withdrawal of licences for a dolphin park in Kochi.
More recently, in China, amidst the current COVID-19 pandemic, some Chinese aquariums are now looking into robotic dolphins to replace real dolphins in traditional aquarium as an alternative to wildlife animal trade. The life-size robotic prototype dolphin that feels anatomically the same as a real dolphin, weighs the same as a real dolphin and mimics real dolphins are developed by tech entrepreneurs in New Zealand. This will allow humans to learn about this amazing species without imprisoning them.
Going forward
We must bear in mind Jeremy Bentham’s famous words on the suffering of animals that laid the bedrock for modern animal welfare, “… the question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?”.
We must make conscious decisions to interact and learn about dolphins without hurting them. Such alternatives include: -
Finding responsible and sustainable boat tours that visit dolphin’s natural habitats without disturbing them, driving through dolphin pods or encircle dolphins for photo opportunities;
Swimming with robotic dolphins instead of real dolphins;
Visit dolphin sanctuaries instead of supporting aquariums and theatrical performances.
Always consider Bramwell’s Five freedoms before you visit any dolphin entertainment venue or dolphinariums, and ask yourself whether the dolphins' Five Freedoms are satisfied whilst in captivity? We will leave that for you to judge!
Courtesy of Jaime Lam
References
Carlie Wiener (2013): Friendly or dangerous waters? Understanding dolphin swim tourism encounters, Annals of Leisure Research, 16:1, 55-71
Melissa Elischer, Michigan State University Extension – September 6 2019: The Five Freedoms: A history lesson in animal care and welfare https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/an_animal_welfare_history_lesson_on_the_five_freedoms
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-dolphin-defender-dolphins-and-sounds/807/
https://www.dolphinproject.com/campaigns/captivity-industry/facts-about-captivity/
https://www.dolphinproject.com/resources/about-dolphins/dolphin-facts/
https://www.dw.com/en/dolphins-gain-unprecedented-protection-in-india/a-16834519
https://www.peta.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/SeaWorld-Dolphin-White-Paper.pdf