Dear Editor,
The Dolphinarium is an enterprise that's doomed to fail. Dolphin poop would spread on our fragile coastline, turning the gold coast into the poop coast.
In an era where agriculture is animal torture, people are shellshocked and don't want to see them in captivity. The Madame Estate zoo closed. The Oyster Pond iguana pens closed.
Statistics are clear:
The following countries do not allow the display of cetaceans for
entertainment: Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Hungary. States,
provinces, counties, and municipalities have done the same, including Barcelona, Spain; Malibu County, California, United States; Maui County, Hawaii, United States; Mexico City, Mexico; Ontario, Canada (orcas only, achieved through a trade and breeding ban); and South Carolina in the United States.
In May 2017, France issued a “decree” that banned the acquisition of more cetaceans for public display, banned the breeding of captive cetaceans, prohibited swimming with captive dolphins and other forms of interaction.
In August 2017, Mexico City banned captive dolphin display, which covered a dolphinarium within the city limits.
Hungary currently prohibits the import of cetaceans for public display and indeed has no dolphinaria.
The government of Jordan had issued a permit to developers wishing to build a dolphinarium (the country currently has no dolphinaria), but in response to public pressure, including a letter from the animal protection coalition Dolphinaria-Free Europe (M. Dodds, letter to Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Lina Anab, 30 July 2018), the permit was revoked.
The government of Antigua and Barbuda, after issuing a permit to a foreign company to capture as many as 12 dolphins annually from local waters, rescinded this permission after activists filed a lawsuit arguing the quota was unsustainable and that it violated regional conservation agreements. These include the city of Vodnjan, Croatia; the city of Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States; and the city of Denver, Colorado, United States. The government of Panama, after two years of debate and controversy, decided not only against the building of a dolphinarium, but also against allowing the capture of dolphins from its waters.
The United Kingdom used to have as many as 30 dolphinaria and now has none. Italy bans swimming wit dolphins encounters and other human-dolphin interactions.
Marine mammals can host a number of pathogens that pose risks to humans. A study of bottlenose dolphins off Florida, Texas, and North Carolina in the United States found 1,871 bacteria and yeast strains and 85 different species of microorganisms in fecal and blowhole samples, several of which were of potential pathogenic significance to humans (Buck et al., 2006).
Black Sea bottlenose dolphins carry antibodies (meaning they have been exposed to the associated pathogens) to morbillivirus, Toxoplasma, and Brucella (Russia IC, 2008). Brucella is common in cetaceans and is zoonotic (Van Bressem et al., 2009; Guzmán-Verri et al., 2012). There have been several incidences of humans being infected by marine mammal strains of Brucella, a bacterium that can cause symptoms ranging from fatigue and depression to joint pain, fever, spontaneous abortion in pregnant females, inflammation of the gonads in males, and even death.
Taken from https://www.projectsforwildlife.com/uploads/1/0/9/5/109512543/cammic_5th_edition_final_08mar19__1_.pdf
Catherine Brown
