Swim with Dolphins in Florida

Excellent excerpt from the Dolphin Project web site..

Dolphins are sound oriented. They communicate 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 explore their ocean environment. With reflected sound, called echolocation or sonar, dolphins can ‘see’ elements that are invisible for other 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 is hiding under the sand. The use of sonar is as important to dolphins as eyesight to humans, and in nature they rely on their sensitive sensory sense in almost every aspect of their daily lives.

Dolphins in a tank 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. Neither can they put it to full use to explore their underwater world, because there isn’t much to explore in a barren, concrete tank.

Sensory deprivation is one of the most damaging aspects of keeping dolphins in a concrete tank. It’s like forcing a person to wear a blindfold for the rest of his life.  This is true whether the dolphin was captured from the wild or born in captivity.

“Educational” is the buzzword most frequently used by SeaWorld to justify captive dolphin swim programs. Many of the dolphins at Discovery Cove have been confined within the walls of a concrete tank all their lives. They will never swim in a straight line for as long as they desire; nor will they ever be able to use their speed, intelligence, sonar, and sense of cooperation to catch live fish. By human design these sonic, free-ranging marine mammals, who would normally swim up to 40 miles a day, are confined to a very small space where, for the rest of their lives, they will have to satisfy a never-ending line of people demanding casual amusement. The dolphins at Discovery Cove will never know what it means to be a real dolphin, in a dolphin’s real world — the sea. Captive born dolphins are freaks that we have created for our own amusement and have no positive educational value. On the contrary, the captive dolphin swim program at Discovery Cove represents a form of bad education in that it only serves to perpetuate our utilitarian perception of nature.

Like any other business, the dolphin captivity industry is based on supply and demand: As long as there is a paying audience to sustain the huge profits of this industry, dolphins will be captured from the wild and captive dolphin breeding programs will be intensified. The dolphins at Discovery Cove were born as part of SeaWorld’s dolphin breeding program, simply because a large part of the public is willing to buy tickets to obtain a hands-on encounter with an exotic animal. It is important to understand that the economic success of places like Discovery Cove is creating a copy cat syndrome in other parts of the world: Numerous violent dolphin captures are now taking place in the Caribbean and Mexico to meet the consumers’ growing demand for a close-up encounter with dolphins.

http://www.dolphinproject.org