Letter to the Editor
Continuing public dialogue over dolphin facility for Cayman
Friday, June 11, 2004
The following letter, addressed to one of our earlier correspondents, a
“Dolphin Trainer,” was sent to us as part of the continuing public dialogue
over the proposal to introduce a captive dolphin facility in the Cayman
Islands.
Dear Mr Mason,
As a very young child, I remember watching The Undersea World of Jacques
Cousteau every Sunday night and I fell head-over-heels-in-love with whales and
dolphins the first time I saw them.
And I live in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, a state that is completely
land-locked, no oceans for hundreds of miles from my home, but that didn’t
deter me in the least in my love of cetaceans, if anything, it fuelled it.
As for your statement that “Dolphins are beautiful animals and people
deserve a chance to see them up close,” I would contend that people do not
‘deserve’ to see dolphins up close, particularly not at the price the victim
dolphins pay for such an encounter.
I would also suggest that you check some statistics, such as the
conservation efforts for humpback whales and yet none are in captivity; and
then there is the statistic for elephants and tigers. They are endangered and
yet people have been going to see them in circuses for decades.
The next issues I would like to address are your contentions that “All we
dolphin trainers do is take care of the animals. I don’t see how it can be our
obligation to tell people how they were captured: We didn’t do it. All we do
is take care of the animals and provide people with an unforgettable
experience.”
Okay, piece by piece here: If you consider that caring for captive dolphins
is inclusive of food deprivation and forcible isolation and environmental
deprivation, then I would agree with your statement, but somehow I don’t think
that was what you meant, even though those things are certainly part of the
dolphins’ experience of captivity.
The tank is the first step in breaking the dolphin’s spirit; it is kept
excruciatingly barren (although it looks great if it were in your backyard,
you were human, and you didn’t function in a vast three dimensional,
underwater, rich, acoustic environment) so that the dolphins will become so
bored that they will begin exploring the world above the surface of the water.
Free dolphins spend approximately 75 percent of their time beneath the
surface of the water. So now that you have their attention above the surface,
“all you trainers do” then is to deprive them of food, you intentionally keep
them hungry, so that they learn to associate food reinforcements with
behaviours you deem are required.
In all the years that I attended captive shows, not once was I ever told
that the fish the dolphins received was their meal and not a treat.
Trainers lead the public to believe that the fish they see the dolphins fed
is a treat and the sin of omission can constitute as great a lie, if not
greater, than the sin of commission, and if the dolphin continues to perform
incorrectly, there are documented cases of the dolphin being put into
isolation, which for a social being can be quite torturous.
The public is deliberately “misdirected” in its perception of all that is
entailed in holding marine mammals captive. It is not nearly as “pretty” as
the captive industry would lead us to believe.
Lastly, if it is not your obligation to tell the public all the facts
surrounding dolphin captivity, then I ask you, just whose is it?
The reason the public is not told all of the truth is that, if known, the
public could not in good conscience, and eventually would not, continue to
patronise facilities that hold marine mammals captive, period.
The fact of the matter is dolphins are forced to survive (not live) in
captivity because of the human quest for instant gratification, the human
misconception that we, as humans, have an inalienable right of entitlement
that supersedes all others’ rights, combined with the “misconceptions” that
the captive industry doles out to the paying public.
I, along with Helene O’Barry and many, many others, will continue to speak
all of the truths to dispel these misconceptions.
Nora Sinkankas, Director
Captive Dolphin Awareness Foundation
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
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