This is how Dolphin trainers look to Dolphins.
It looks like Marineland, a Sea World style family fun park in Napier, New Zealand will no longer be allowed to imprison and force Dolphins to perform for fat and giggling crowds. Marineland will not be granted the necessary licenses to capture any more Dolphins and once their last elderly Dolphin Kelly dies, Marineland will close. More than four million people have visited Marineland since it opened in the mid-1960s, but attendance has been shit since dolphin Shona died in April 2006, leaving Kelly alone and miserable in the Dolphin pool. It looks like New Zealand's environmental select committee understands that capturing Dolphins and keeping them in captivity is cruel. Bravo!

Read.

SCUBA Dogs: They will never be able to tell the difference.

Why not keep Dolphins in captivity?

• 53% of Dolphins that actually survive the capture die within 90 days.
• Half of captured Dolphins die within the first two years of captivity. The average lifespan of a surviving captive Dolphin is only 5 years. The average life span of a dolphin in the wild is 45 years, this despite their exposure to predators like Sharks.
• In many tanks the water is full of chemicals as well as bacteria, causing blindness in Dolphins.
• Captive-bred Dolphin babies are usually kept secret from the public for months. Why? Because there is an accepted extremely high mortality rate for captive bred Dolphins.
• Some marine parks underfeed their Dolphins in order to get them to perform tricks for food.
• Dolphins travel up to 100 miles a day in the wild. Confined Dolphins often hurt themselves--smashing their heads and snouts against the walls of their small enclosures. This behavior is similar to how captive Lions, Tigers, and Bears circle and pace in their enclosures...bluntly put, the animals are driven insane by their captivity.
• Dolphins are used to hunting live Fish. Feeding them dead fish robs them of mental and physical stimulation making them despondent and bored. Dolphins are not Cats or Dogs.
• Captive Dolphins often establish pecking orders and competitive social structures that don't exist in the wild. As a result, captive Dolphins often fight and injure each other.

Cribbed from.

Thanks to Pete for the story idea.

--El Tiburon

technorati tags: Marineland, Sea World, Sharks, Dolphins, New Zealand, Napier