Captivity Update

The ethics of keeping marine mammals in captivity was one of the workshops held during the European Cetacean Society's conference, from 26 March through 1 April, held at Sweden's Kolmården Dolphinarium. Results are not available as the newsletter goes to print, but CSI is grateful for the attention given to the issue.

The ethical problem with captive dolphin displays begins with people paying to get in, and would end if people didn't. To paraphrase One Voice's Ric O'Barry, whatever a tourist pays to see the show, the dolphin pays with its life. Until CSI and many other organizations can get that truth across to folks just trying to have a good time, dolphins and whales will suffer. O'Barry would want us to add the names of the 61 cetaceans known to have died in captivity just at the infamous Miami Seaquarium, but we don't have the room. Besides the 354 bottlenose dolphins alive in US display facilities as of March, the US Navy has about 70, and there are several other species. None are there by choice, but after all, it's all about the money and dolphins and whales bring it in. Cuban bottlenose dolphins captured for display are being sold for US$45,000 each, and the market is expanding actively. Even Varna's dolphinarium in Bulgaria wants to import 10 dolphins from Cuba by next February. But what of unmonitored and unregulated captures worldwide? No one has a clue.

The annual dolphin slaughter at Taiji, Japan ended in February. We can't report how many dolphins were mercilessly killed or sold to captivity, because of effective strategies this year to stop the world from witnessing the travesty. After some early protesters from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society played into the hands of the authorities and freed some netted dolphins, their actions became the excuse to keep almost all other outsiders legally restricted and unable to document the slaughter any further. Ric and Helene O'Barry of France's One Voice managed to get to Taiji, though they were threatened and generally stymied, but they did witness the horror.

Our reaction to what happens at Taiji every year, and the other places in Japan where "drive fisheries" force dolphins and whales into bays to be killed without mercy, is a purely cultural response. The Japanese do not agree with us and, supported by their culture, see little wrong with the killing beyond the undue publicity and interference by ignorant outsiders. Local people generally are more concerned with the insulting imposition of western values on their culture than with any notion of humane concern for the dolphins. The mercilessness of the killing may be appalling to us, but this year it went on with full protection from the authorities.

The slaughter has a long history, justified to provide food, to destroy pests and competitors for fish, and more recently, to provide income from the captivity industry. Locals admit that the drives are now partially sustained by the captivity industry, which sends representatives to the "Dolphin Base" to select suitable dolphins before the rest are brutally killed. The base may be supported from the local "World Dolphin Resort", which operates dolphin swim programs. There were perhaps 50 trainers at Taiji during the drives, including some members of the International Marine Animal Trainers Association (IMATA).

The slaughters will continue, as will the conflict between cultures. We want to do something, but haven't a clue how to stop this inhumane tragedy. Perhaps you'll get a clue about what to do from one of these resources: http://www.onevoice-ear.org/english/campaigns/dolphins.html, http://www.dolphinproject.org/, http://www.hsus.org/ace/20125, or http://www.wag.co.za/dolphins/cetacean_slaughter.html.

Guinea-Bissau generated a month-long storm in January that blew through the halls of the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). It may serve as an example of many what is to come wherever there are remote developing coasts with accessible dolphins. First alerts overestimated the number of bottlenose dolphins captured for export to display facilities, but subsequently revealed a network of shady dealers and worse, confirmed that the CITES requirement that an exporting member party (nation) first complete a Non-Detriment Finding (NDF) simply lacks enough muscle. Article IV of CITES requires that: "an export permit shall only be granted when, in addition to other conditions, a Scientific Authority of the State of export has advised that such export will not be detrimental to the survival of that species". An inadequate NDF is at the center of the Mexican debacle that allowed 28 dolphins to be imported from the Solomon Islands last year, as reported in the last Whales Alive!

In the end no dolphins were exported from Guinea-Bissau, but CSI is waiting for the next alert from somewhere else. Mexican courts, by the way, may find considerable illegalities and even corruption as they deal with the Parque Nizuc case.

Antigua's Dolphin Fantaseas in February was stopped from capturing 12 dolphins in local waters as the government reversed its controversial position. The victory was due to Martha Watkin Gilkes, President of the Antigua & Barbuda Independent Tourism Promotion Corporation (ABITPC). CSI thanks her for spearheading the battle so many of us joined to overturn the Antiguan Cabinet's issuing of a license to John Mezzanotte, owner of Dolphin Fantaseas. While Mezzanotte was reported in December to have applied for a permit to capture 12 dolphins from Antigua's exclusive economic zone, the government had granted that and many other "development incentives" months earlier. ABITPC took the issue to the High Court, but the highly publicized "dolphin case" hadn't begun when the government changed its mind.

The Bahamas, by contrast, lost the high ground by allowing Atlantis to operate a dolphin facility, with an unknown number of dolphins yet to be captured from the wild or brought into the Bahamas from other dolphin facilities. Bahamian Prime Minister Christie said that "everyone in the Caribbean was doing it and that we had to do it to keep up with the competition." To thousands of tourist who put animal welfare first Antigua has just jumped in front of the competition, and if you tell the Bahamas you were a tourist they might change their minds.

Guyana surfaced as the crisis for March, as four dolphin display exporters were presumed to be trying to capture and export bottlenose dolphins. CSI joined many organizations in a protest to the government, particularly for the violations of Appendix II of CITES. No one knows much about cetacean populations in Guyana's waters, and the issue seems to have passed with the attention . . . we hope.

The CITES Conference of Parties will be meeting later this year. CSI needs to be there, if for no other reason than to push for changes to create better standards for the NDF, mechanisms to challenge inadequate NDF's, something more than non-binding guidelines on parties, and a definition of non-compliance with CITES that isn't toothless.