The perturbing truth behind the swim with dolphins

The keepers use lots of chorine to keep the pens clean. That chlorine can damage a dolphin’s eyes, and some dolphins swim around with their eyes closed, like Angel the albino dolphin in the above picture. Worse, the chlorine can damage their skin.

At the other extreme are dirty tanks like Misty’s that don’t have a filtration system and are full of algae and dead fish. Such unsanitary conditions are bad for the dolphin.

Dolphins are highly intelligent and sensitive animals. Keeping them in small pens and forcing them to perform the same 10 tricks over and over can make them frustrated and aggressive. Frustrated, angry dolphins can become dangerous to humans. They can behave aggressively towards both trainers and visitors. The dolphin in the above picture is biting someone who apparently tried to pet it.

It’s possible that dolphins can even kill themselves. Dolphins do not breathe automatically, so each breath is a conscious effort. A suicidal dolphin can end their life simply by not taking the next breath. One of the dolphins who portrayed Flipper in the TV show of the same name died in this fashion.

While most captive animals live longer than do their wild counterparts, the reverse is true with dolphins. Wild dolphins can have a life expectancy comparable to that of a human, while captive dolphins tend to die before they’re 30 years old. Captive dolphins are fed frozen fish that don’t provide all of their nutritional needs. They are therefore routinely given ulcer medications and antibiotics — and they still die young. Dolphins are not scavengers and eat only live fish in the wild.

A stunt like this is dangerous to both dolphins and humans. If the woman falls off, she’ll hurt herself. If she lands on a dolphin, both could be injured.

Capturing wild dolphins involves chasing them into nets. They are then picked up and loaded into a boat. Female dolphins are considered more trainable and therefore more desirable.

The stress and trauma of being captured can be fatal to dolphins. Even worse, members of pods or families are separated from each other.

These dolphins have essentially beached themselves on command. In the wild, dolphins only beach themselves if they are in serious distress.

While tailwalking is a staple of dolphin shows, it is rarely seen in wild dolphins. Tailwalking is most commonly seen in energetic young female dolphins. Some of them learned tailwalking from dolphins that had been rehabilitated and released back into the wild.

In the wild, dolphins live in groups called pods. Like all social animals, they have methods of communicating that really can’t be observed in captive animals.

While some dolphins can and do give birth in captivity, they cannot raise their young the way wild dolphins would. For example, wild dolphins teach their young to hunt fish, while captive dolphins cannot hunt for themselves. Scientists who want to learn how dolphins teach their young how to hunt need to observe wild dolphins.

Dolphins can get sunburn, just like humans. In the wild, they can dive deep and escape the sun. Captive dolphins are often kept in enclosures that are too shallow for that.

Captive dolphins are kept in bare pools that have no hiding places or enrichment. The pools are sometimes so small that the dolphin’s sonar bounces off the walls and confuses the animal.

There are two ways to transport an animal that lives in water: wet transit, which involves a tank, and dry transit, in which the animal is kept in a padded sling, and humans keep it cool and wet. Wet transit is used for smaller sea mammals, while dry transit is used for the larger ones. Sometimes, dolphins will actually be transported by plane. Regardless of the method, transporting dolphins or other cetaceans is so traumatic that many animals die while being transported.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES. has offers guidelines on transporting marine mammals — and those guidelines give clues to what can go wrong, as they emphasize that only healthy animals should be transported. They also refer to “sudden illness” and the necessity of keeping the dolphin cool.

Most of the captive dolphins belong to species that aren’t endangered and already have stable populations. Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops. are the most commonly used genus because they look friendly and are easy to train. It is also one of the more common dolphins.

The spotted dolphin is popular with swim-with-dolphin programs, especially in the Bahamas. Spotted dolphins that are frequently exposed to people gradually lose their fear of them.

Sources: thedodo.com / humanesociety.org / dolphindock.com.au / mentalfloss.com / cites.org / dolphins-world.com / globalanimal.org