Who & What Is 'Dolphin Fantaseas?'
A Tortola Perspective
By Helene O’Barry, May 2001
Dolphin Fantaseas (DF) is an Anguilla-based company that was founded 3 years ago under the name Dolphin Lagoon Inc. Apparently the name was changed when the owner — Graham Simpson — realised that the concrete holding tank would not pass as a real lagoon. DF has kept six wild-caught Cuban dolphins captive since January 2001 and is geared up to broker captive dolphin for other facilities in the Caribbean. The company is currently trying to set up a captive dolphin swim program at Prospect Reef of Tortola as the first step in this scheme.
DF poses a serious threat to the welfare of dolphins in that the company is causing an increase in the violent captures, lifelong confinement, and commercial exploitation of dolphins.
When Dolphin Lagoon changed its name to Dolphin Fantaseas, four 'so-called' marine mammal experts were hired. According to Chris Heslop - - public relations spokesperson of DF — the marine mammal experts are from the United States and have worked at captivity facilities including Sea World and Dolphin Quest.
Dolphin Quest is owned by the infamous dolphin captor Dr. Jay Sweeney. Dr. Sweeney is featured in A Fall From Freedom — a TV Documentary produced by The Marine Mammal Fund — and has taken part in orchestrating drive fisheries in Japan: In the Inland Sea of Japan, dolphins are driven ashore and then hacked to death by local fisherman. The world was shocked by the TV footage showing the entire bay red with blood as the dolphins were brutally massacred. Dr. Sweeney brokered some of the surviving dolphins for captive dolphin swim programs in Japan and other countries.
If DF is successful in creating a captive dolphin attraction in Tortola, many more dolphins will be captured from the wild and brokered through DF to be confined and exploited at the many hotels and resorts in the Caribbean.
We must isolate and contain the confinement of dolphins to Anguilla and prevent it from spreading to other islands. In other words, we must keep Tortola dolphin safe.
HOW IS A DOLPHIN CAPTURED?
The capture of dolphins is a violent procedure. Pods of bottlenose dolphins are chased to exhaustion; surrounded with a net and dragged onto the capture boat where the capture team searches through the terrified group for the specimen they want. The lucky ones are thrown overboard. Those selected are taken ashore. They will never see their ocean world and their pod again. According to dolphin captors, the most desirable dolphins are between two to four years old and still associate with their mothers. Many bottlenose dolphins have been brutally separated from their calves, regardless of the fact that a bottlenose dolphin normally protects and remains with her calf for at least five years. The violent and permanent separation is a traumatic experience for both mother and calf, and while the exact number of animals killed during the capture procedure remains unknown, we have documentation to show that dolphins have died from shock during capture.
HOW DO DOLPHIN CAPTURES AFFECT THE ENVIRONMENT?
Little research has been done to determine the long-term effect that dolphin captures have on the environment. For example, today the majority of dolphin captures take place in Cuba, where no population studies of the resident dolphins are carried out. According to information we have received from one of our sources in Cuba, Cuba captures up to 45 dolphins every year — thereby exceeding their quota by about 30 dolphins per year — with no consideration to the damaging influence this has on the wild dolphin population. We have every reason to believe that the annual capture of this many dolphins in Cuban waters has a damaging consequence for the gene pool of the wild dolphin population in the area, in particular considering the fact that most of the dolphins that are captured are young females: The very best dolphins are taken away, leaving the dregs behind. In addition, one can only guess at how many dolphins die during the capture. For obvious reasons, the dolphin captivity industry does not willingly provide the public and the media with the facts. However, we can present documentation in the form of a written, signed testimonial that over 20 dolphins were killed during a single dolphin capture in the United States.
HOW ARE DOLPHINS TRAINED?
The performance of captive dolphins is achieved through a strictly controlled training method that takes advantage of the dolphins’ hunger and total dependence on their trainers for food.
Dolphins are wild animals whose natural behavioural repertoire does not include behaving like pets and circus clowns. In order to train dolphins to perform these unnatural behaviours, the trainer must first obtain complete control over the animals. This is accomplished by taking advantage of the captive dolphins’ powerless predicament: They depend totally on their keepers to be fed. Once the hungry dolphins have surrendered to eating dead fish, the trainer teaches them that only when they perform a desired behaviour; such as tolerating human swimmers or waving at the audience, do they receive their reward: a fish. This is how abnormal behaviors are enforced in a dolphin. No doubt, keeping the dolphins a little hungry induces them to continue performing in order to be fed. The captivity industry calls this training method 'positive reward.' From the dolphin’s perspective, however, it’s food deprivation.
ARE DOLPHINS SOCIAL ANIMALS?
Absolutely!
Bottlenose dolphins live in groups known as pods. It is within the pod that the individual dolphin finds his own identity. In fact, there is a very distinct pattern to bottlenose dolphins’ pod structure:
'As they become socially and sexually mature, the youngsters leave the sub-adult groups they joined after weaning, and males and females go their separate ways. Females join up with other females in 'bands', which typically include ten or so mothers and their most recent offspring. () Often a young female leaving a sub-adult group will rejoin the female band into which she was born, and genetic studies show that many bands consist of the females of families, which have remained together for generations.' (Chris Catton, 'Dolphins', 1995).
When a dolphin is captured and taken out of its ocean home, it not only affects the victim dolphin but also has a detrimental consequence for the pod it leaves behind.
HOW DO DOLPHINS COMMUNICATE?
Dolphins communicate by hearing and emitting sound, and by reading body language.
Dolphins are sound oriented. They communicate with sound by producing a large spectrum of sounds in the form of clicks and whistles. Furthermore, they constantly send out bursts of sounds of many different frequencies to navigate, forage, and explore their diverse ocean environment. With reflected sound, called echolocation or sonar, dolphins can 'see' elements that are invisible for animals -- including humans -- that are sight oriented, depending on reflected light for vision. This is how dolphins searching for food can easily detect a fish that’s hiding under the sand.
The use of sonar is as important to dolphins as eyesight to humans. Chris Catton in his book Dolphins writes:
'The ability of dolphins to make a wide range of sounds and to hear clearly underwater is important because they rely on these faculties in almost every aspect of their daily lives.'
Captive dolphins are severely restricted in using their sonar. They can’t use it to catch live fish, as they are fed dead fish as food rewards. They can’t put it to full use to explore their underwater world, because there isn’t much to explore in a barren, concrete tank or a cage in the sea. They certainly can’t use it to navigate, because they aren’t going anywhere.
Depriving dolphins of the ability to use their most important sense — their sense of sonar — is stressful for dolphins. The sensory deprivation imposed on captive dolphins is one of the most damaging aspects of dolphin captivity.
WHY DOES THE DOLPHIN CAPTIVITY INDUSTRY USE A DECEPTIVE CHANGE OF LANGUAGE?
The dolphin captivity industry doesn’t want the public or the media to do know how dolphins are captured. Therefore, when asked where the dolphins came from, they use a deceptive change of language: Instead of saying that the dolphins were captured; they will tell you that they have been 'collected' or 'acquired.'
A training manual used by tour guides at Sea World, Orlando, Florida, clearly shows the captivity industry’s attempt to mislead the public by disguising reality. At Sea World, the employees are told to avoid the words 'captured,' 'cage,' 'tank,' and 'captivity.' Instead they must use the words 'acquired,' 'enclosure,' 'aquarium,' and 'controlled environment.' The training manual goes on to say about the words 'dead' and 'die': 'If people ask you about a particular animal that you know has passed away, please say, 'I don’t know.' In other words, Sea World staff is told to lie to the public.
And another example of the same phenomenon:
In a brochure advertising the marine mammal capture company 'Dolphin Services International,' Dr. Sweeney doesn’t call himself dolphin captor. Instead, he calls himself 'Collector of Marine Mammals.' The reason for this illusory change of words is obvious: Dr. Sweeney - - like the rest of the dolphin captivity industry - - doesn’t want to publicly acknowledge how violent the capture of dolphins really is. By changing the word 'captor' with the word 'collected,' the brutality with which these wild and powerful creatures are taken into captivity is cunningly concealed.
The fact that the dolphin captivity industry is so eager to withhold an accurate description of the violent dolphin captures from the public and the media clearly demonstrates that the industry is fully aware of the public outcry a disclosure of the truth would create. As stated by Jean-Michel Cousteau in an article published in the News-Journal, May 16 1993: 'If marine parks were truly educational, they would not need to rely on circumlocution to make their practices palatable to the public. When hotels and restaurants can obtain permits to display dolphins, education and science become mere distortions designed to make us feel comfortable with what are actually lucrative commercial ventures -- circuses of the sea.'
DOES CAPTIVITY OF DOLPHINS HELP DOLPHIN CONSERVATION?
No.
In order to justify the capture and confinement of dolphins, the dolphin captivity industry and the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums (AMMPA) present the dolphins as 'ambassadors' of their own species and maintain that captive dolphin displays serve the purpose of being educational. They are not in this business for the money, they say. They want us to believe that they capture and confine dolphins in order that the paying audience learns to appreciate dolphins and, based on that, grows motivated to contribute to the protection of dolphins in nature.
But how can the spectators learn anything about the true nature of dolphins when the captive dolphins are trained in unnatural behaviours, mere circus tricks that these once-wild, opportunistic foragers of the oceans are performing for food rewards of dead fish? And how are the spectators supposed to become aware of the importance of preserving dolphins in nature when the dolphins they are watching have been either stolen from nature, kicking and screaming, or were born in captivity and have never seen the ocean?
There is no scientific evidence to support the claim that the capture and confinement of wild animals helps conserve them as a species. Humpback whales are appreciated and protected by people who have never seen a humpback whale. On the other hand, the elephants and tigers are on the brink of extinction today, despite the fact that these animals have been displayed in zoos and circuses for thousands of years.
Since the world’s first formal dolphin show opened in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1938, hundreds of dolphins have been captured from the wild and trained to perform silly circus tricks. When the dolphins died, the captivity industry captured more. These are disposable dolphins for our disposable society, and to call them ambassadors is simply an obviously desperate attempt at sanitizing the exploitation of these animals.
WHAT IS THE POSITIVE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF CAPTIVE DOLPHIN DISPLAYS?
There is none.
Educational is the buzzword most frequently used to defend the capture and confinement of dolphins. The irony is that while the captivity industry’s strongest justification to use dolphins in dolphin shows and dolphin swim programs is the alleged wish to educate the public about the importance of preserving dolphins in nature, the same industry refers to the fact that bottlenose dolphins are not threatened by extinction to defend the position that it is okay to capture them. It is precisely this utilitarian view of nature and its inhabitants that has destroyed wildlife everywhere on the planet. The capture, confinement, and exploitation of dolphins works against the spirit of wildlife conservation in that it cherishes human dominance over nature, leaving the public with the fatal message that turning wild animals into performing circus clowns and pets is permissible.
Captivity of dolphins is a form of education, but it’s a form of bad education in that it teaches millions of people, of whom many are impressionable children, that abusing nature is acceptable, as long as you can call it research, education, or therapy.
IS CAPTIVITY STRESSFUL FOR DOLPHINS?
Yes.
Dolphins have evolved over millions of years, adapting perfectly to life in the ocean. They are intelligent, social, and self-aware, exhibiting evidence of a highly developed emotional sense. Imagine the panic dolphins must experience as they are yanked from the ocean, forever separated from their ocean world, their family, and their ability to swim freely.
Putting these complex, large brained animals through a violent capture and lifelong confinement in a small tank or sea cage inevitably exposes them to trauma and stress. Even people who work for the dolphin captivity industry admit to the fact that confining a free-ranging marine mammal in a restricted area has a negative impact on the welfare of these animals. Dr. Sweeney has said the following: 'Husbandry problems of marine mammals in captivity often come directly from exhibiting animals in a closed environment.' (Marine Mammal Behavioral Diagnostics, in L. Dierauf (ed.), Handbook of Marine Mammal Medicine. 1990, Boca Raton, CRC Press.)
DO CAPTIVE DOLPHINS LIVE AS LONG AS THEIR WILD CO-SPECIES?
There has been much debate about the longevity of captive dolphins compared with that of dolphins in the wild.
When studying the data provided by the captivity industry of the United States — gathered in the Marine Mammal Inventory Report (MMIR) — it becomes evident that captive dolphins have died from appalling causes: Captive dolphins have died from shock at capture. They have died during transport. Some have died from drowning, others from crashing into the wall of their tank. A great number of captive dolphins have died from stress related diseases.
However, rather than getting into an argument with the captivity industry about the longevity of captive dolphins -- thereby reducing the issue to being a question of how long a captive dolphin can be kept alive -- we have long ago taken this position: That the dolphin captivity issue is not about quantity of life, it’s about quality of life, not about science, but ethics.
IS THIS TRUE THAT DOLPHINS LIVE BETTER LIVES IN CAPTIVITY THAN IN NATURE?
No, this is not true.
People who are in favour of keeping dolphins captive will often make the statement that life in the sea is so stressful for dolphins; they are far better off being captured and used in dolphin shows and swim programs. 'If you are a dolphin you do not know where your next meal will come from; when you are going to run into a hungry shark or killer whale; where the next drift net is or what pollutants humans have dumped into the ocean,' they say.
This is like saying a human being would be better off never leaving his house out of fear of being hit by a car.
Living is doing things. It is expressing who and what you are by living in accordance with your true nature and, in doing so, letting all of your natural skills unfold. For a dolphin, this means chasing fish, surfing, diving deep, leaping high for the sheer joy of it, navigating, foraging, socialising with other dolphins, and moving in a straight line mile after mile.
Yes, we need to stop polluting the oceans. We need to stop drift-netting and over-fishing. And we need to stop capturing, exploiting, and killing dolphins for casual amusement.
To add to the destruction of nature by capturing dolphins is not going to solve any of our environmental problems. The contrary is true: It enforces the widespread misconception that nature and its inhabitants exist for humans to make use of as we please. The fact is that captive dolphin swim programs only serve to perpetuate our insidious utilitarian perception of nature.
To claim that it is in the best interest of dolphins to be captured and sentenced to lifelong confinement is nothing more than propaganda used to sanitize the commercial exploitation of these complex, intelligent, and wild creatures.
ARE THE BEHAVIORS OF CAPTIVE DOLPHINS THAT MUCH DIFFERENT FROM THOSE OF DOLPHINS IN NATURE?
Very much so.
Habitat dictates behavior. This is a major reason why captivity does not work for dolphins.
The environment of captive dolphins is unnatural, and so the behavior of captive dolphins becomes unnatural. This is precisely what the captivity industry wants, of course, since it’s the unnatural behaviors of dolphins that attract the paying audiences. The spectators have come to be amused and expect the dolphins to jump though hoops, kiss their trainers, walk on their tail, and tolerate being petted and prodded by tourists who have paid to swim with them. These abnormal behaviours are methodically enforced in captive dolphins by two methods:
1. Depriving the dolphins of living in accordance with their true nature.
2. Controlling the dolphins with food.
For more information on the behaviors of captive dolphins compared with those of dolphins in nature, please see the enclosed article 'Free or Captive?'
HAVE HUMAN SWIMMERS EVER BEEN INJURED IN CAPTIVE DOLPHIN SWIM PROGRAMS?
Yes.
The forced interactions with people are demanding for dolphins that must be kept under constant and strict control by their trainers during the swim sessions. Dolphins used in SWTD programs have demonstrated agitated and aggressive behaviours under the stressful conditions of confinement and forced interactions with people. These behaviours have resulted in serious injury to swimmers. There are accounts of human injuries in the form of lacerations, tooth rakes, internal injuries, broken bones, and shock.
Captive dolphins are known to become sexually frustrated in SWTD programs, and it is common to see them masturbate on human swimmers. Just a few examples:
Two former employees at a SWTD program in Florida, USA, state in a report on injuries, violations, and complaints in relation to the swim sessions:
'In the seven months of employment at Dolphins Plus there were at least three occasions in which people had to receive medical assistance — two at a hospital — after an incident with the dolphins. () The aggressive behaviors come in various stages. Jaw clapping and head nodding are two warning signs indicating irritation in the dolphins; however, the final physical act carried out on the human victim is either a raking with the teeth (), a butting with the rostrum, or a tail slap near or on the swimmer.'
The report also addresses the danger that occurs when a dolphins breaches during the swim session:
'As one might expect, if the breaching dolphin makes an error in judgment, he/she can accidentally land on the human, inflicting injury on them. This scenario was exhibited at least twice at Dolphins Plus, once on an employee () and once on a customer. '
The authors go on to explain that sexual behaviours are by far the most common form of interaction exhibited by captive dolphins during a swim sessions. They add:
'Literature and our experience suggest that much of this sexual frustration is a result of boredom, a release of frustration and anger, or a combination of the two.'
A dolphin trainer who works in a Cuban SWTD program supports this statement. During an interview in 1997, he said:
'The method used to train dolphins is very strict, like the military method used in training soldiers. Captive dolphins are exposed to a lot of stress as a result of it. They release their stress through depression, aggression, or sexual activity.'
In addition, dolphins may cause shock and injury to human swimmers out of sheer playfulness. As stated in the report: '() an over-playful dolphin has been known to keep a person in the water when the people have been called out at the end of a session. This is usually done by the dolphin actively putting its head on the person and shoving the person away from the dock. Again, as the swimmer struggles and sometimes panics while trying to escape the dolphin and the water, bruises and scratches are the result.'
The report makes a point out of the fact that the dolphin captivity industry tries to conceal to the public the risk of being injured in a SWTD program:
'In our briefings to the public, it was suggested we paint a rosy picture of what dolphins are like. The word 'aggressive' was a forbidden term. We were expected to leave out crucial points of the dolphins’ behavior, from rough sexual behaviors, jaw clapping, to possible aggressiveness. () In an employee meeting () we asked what to do in a situation when a customer wanted to know if anyone had ever been hurt at the facility. Our programmed response was to be 'not to my knowledge.'
The known injuries inflicted on SWTD participants at this particular facility include a woman being butted aggressively several times in the leg by a male dolphin. The woman had to seek medical council at a hospital. It includes a dolphin thrusting a woman half way across the pen, raking her at least four times and leaving deep, open wounds in her body. In another incident a woman was butted and pushed into the fence by a male dolphin. The dolphin used so much force; the woman received bruised ribs and other injuries from the ordeal. She, too, was obliged to seek medical assistance at a hospital.
WILL A CAPTIVE DOLPHIN SWIM PROGRAM TAINT THE IMAGE OF TORTOLA?
Certainly.
International investigative journalists are becoming increasingly interested in estimating and disclosing how many dolphins are being captured from the wild to meet the demand for dolphins to be used in captive dolphin swim programs all over the world.
As the media and the public become aware of the methods used in capturing, training, and trafficking dolphins, countries that refuse to participate in these controversial activities will stand out as desirable eco-tourist destinations. By becoming part of the dolphin captivity industry, Tortola will be viewed by many as a less desirable tourist destination. At the same time, we are living in a spectators' society: Everybody wants to have a good time. The dolphins are paying a very high prize for people's desire to be entertained, and even if it turns out that the confinement and commercial exploitation of dolphins is a profitable venture in Tortola -- and it might very well be -- one thing is certain: The establishment of a captive dolphin attraction in Tortola will forever destroy the slogan of this beautiful island: 'Nature’s Best-Kept Secret.'
A WINDFALL OF POSITIVE PUBLICITY FOR TORTOLA
By keeping Tortola dolphin safe and declining Prospect Reef Hotel’s request to confine wild dolphins, the government of Tortola will be sending a powerful message to the rest of the world about Tortola’s respect for nature and its inhabitants, thus creating a windfall of positive publicity for Tortola and the British Virgin Islands.
