A baby dolphin died there last year - sources say it was from swallowing litter. And an old dolphin named Bucky has cancer, but he’s still used for circus shows.
If you think this is wrong, please sign Australia for Dolphins’ petition.
Your signature will be presented to the Premier of New South Wales. He’s a surfer and animal lover with the power to abolish dolphin captivity in his state –the first step towards getting it banned all over Australia.
Help save dolphins from a lifetime of anguish. Add your name to the petition.
Drive hunting dolphinsAll dolphins suffer in captivity.
Now it appears that it will likely take 40 to 50 years for the hardest-hit populations of common bottlenose dolphins to recover from the disaster on their own, according to a new study. Kathleen Colegrove, a veterinarian pathologist on a team of nearly 20 researchers examining dolphin deaths in the oil spill zone, said that recovery may seem long, but because of the effects she has seen in adult dolphin females and stillborn or newborn dolphins, she thinks that the estimates are accurate. “Reproductive effects have long-standing consequences,” Colegrove said.
Six years after the disaster, researchers are finding long-term damage in a broad group of marine creatures.
In a research summary, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration didn’t pull any punches. “Current evidence suggests that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is a contributor to the largest and longest-lasting die-off in the Gulf of Mexico,” scientists wrote. They summarized the body of work about dolphins as “a picture of chronic poor health, failed pregnancies, and increased mortality of coastal bottlenose dolphins in the aftermath and footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”
A government document called the Programmatic Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan carefully outlines the injuries that the spill caused as it released an average of more than 1.5 million gallons of oil into the Gulf every day, creating a detectable oil slick the size of Virginia that was visible along the coastline and in the water long after the well was capped.
Earlier in April, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier approved an $8.8 billion settlement with oil giant BP, the party that he ruled was primarily responsible for the spill. The U.S. Department of the Interior will use that money to implement the restoration plan.
Colegrove’s work builds on a large body of research showing how the enormous spill affected dolphins. To date, the data show that Louisiana’s estuary dolphins, which live closest to the shore, were killed by the oil at high rates and are struggling to carry their babies to term.
The oil particularly devastated the pods of bottlenose dolphins that live in Barataria Bay, just off the southeastern coast of Louisiana, which died at a 35 percent higher rate and saw nearly a 50 percent drop in reproductive success, according to research published last year. Those numbers won’t rebound anytime soon because dolphins are slow to mature and have 380-day pregnancies.
People may grieve dolphin mortalities more than those of other creatures. “I think people feel a kinship with dolphins because of their intelligence and their charismatic personalities,” Colegrove said. But the overall findings—that the oil spill depleted key populations—are echoed in hundreds of other species, even the horsefly that two Louisiana State University Agricultural Center researchers have been studying.
Claudia Husseneder and Lane Foil have found that in oiled wetlands, the population of the greenhead horsefly crashed and few of its larvae grew. “While nobody cares much about this bloodsucking nemesis, this species is a bioindicator of the food web in marshes,” Husseneder said.
The damage assessment’s list of injuries is long: damaged gills and livers in the southern flounder; adverse effects at all oyster life stages; DNA damage in freshwater turtles; anemia, liver dysfunction, and alterations in heart function in birds; and growth and reproductive issues in fish, such as the juvenile red drum, Pacific white shrimp, Gulf killifish.
Not all of the Gulf’s 22 species of marine mammals are as easy to find as its bottlenose dolphins. The others were tracked through audio recorders and catalogs of visual sightings. Researchers have determined that the endangered sperm whale, though it lives farther from shore, lost 7 percent of its population and will take an estimated 21 years to recover. Bryde’s whales, a large, filter-feeding baleen, lost 22 percent of its population and will take 69 years to recover, the plan estimates.
BP has consistently denied any culpability for animal die-offs. In the case of dolphins, BP spokesperson Geoff Morrell has said that nothing definitively links sickness and death in the Gulf’s dolphins to exposure from the well.
Sometimes it is tough to refute Morrell’s statements, because while the massive amounts of data collected by researchers have long been available online, some researchers who worked on the damage assessment have been barred from speaking with reporters about their research until the long-running litigation over the spill concludes.
Demetri Spryopoulos, Alexis Temkin, and other scientists from the University of South Carolina are using stem cells from sentinel animals—dolphins, whales, American alligators, and humans—to test reactions to dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, or DOSS, an ingredient in Corexit, a dispersant used to clean up the spill. The South Carolina team has identified the compound as a likely “obesogen,” an endocrine disruptor that has the potential to alter a fetus’ stem cells, making them more likely to become fat cells. “What doesn’t kill you makes you fatter,” team members sometimes quip.
Such effects could be generational in oil-exposed people, leading to more newborns that are predisposed to obesity, they said.
Colegrove’s team also is looking at the long-term effects both of dolphin fetuses exposed to oil and of adult dolphins chronically sickened by oil—most often through damage to lung and adrenal glands—to the point where the mammals struggle to reproduce. Her team found that 22 percent of dolphins from the oil-spill zone had bacterial pneumonia, compared with 2 percent outside the zone. While 15 percent of stillborn and juvenile dolphins found outside the spill zone had abnormal lungs, 88 percent in the zone had such abnormalities, including partially or completely collapsed lungs.
“We found fetal distress and infections in wombs that led to failures,” said Colegrove, who added that she encountered some of the worst lung lesions she’d ever seen. “And that was consistent with what we’d seen in previous studies. It’s the downstream effects of having a sick mom.”
Alfonso Herrera joins PETA Latino in their efforts to persuade SeaWorld to send the killer whales and other animals suffered in captivity to sanctuaries in the ocean. Join him to see how the orcas, the nose bottlenose dolphins and other animals suffer when they are forced to live in small concrete tanks.
Target: Mauricio Martinez del Alva, CEO of Ventura Entertainment
Goal: Don’t build a park to hold dolphins in captivity in the desert.
A “swim with dolphins” tourist attraction is currently being constructed in Arizona. According to reports, a Mexico-based firm, Dolphinaris and its parent company, Ventura Entertainment, are responsible for the project. Their plan is to build a one million gallon tank, which will house eight dolphins, and charge customers to get in the water with the animals.
Dolphins are not suited to live in tanks full of chlorinated water where they are repeatedly forced to interact with humans. According to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation group, these conditions can put the animals under extreme stress, which can lead to lack of appetite, weight loss, anti-social behavior, stomach ulcers, and increased likelihood of contracting fatal diseases.
Dolphin-human interactions are also not as safe as attractions like these lead the public to believe. Dolphins can spread infections to humans, and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation group has documented many incidents of physical injuries resulting from human-dolphin interactions, including broken bones and bitten fingers.
Dolphins are not pets to be used for humans’ entertainment. They are wild animals. This project will exploit dolphins for monetary gain, endangering their health in the process. Sign the petition below to stop the construction of this dolphin park.
Dear Mr. Martinez del Alva,
A dolphin park currently under construction in the Arizona desert will do irreparable damage to the creatures you plan to house in it. Dolphins are not pets; they are wild animals. Dolphins are meant to live freely in the ocean, not in chlorinated tanks where they are constantly forced to interact with humans.
You received a letter in January from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation group, informing you of the potentially dire consequences of this project. Dolphins in captivity that are forced to interact with humans daily are under extreme stress. Their stress is so extreme that they can experience anti-social behavior, weight loss, stomach ulcers, diseases and even death.
The letter also informed you that swimming with dolphins is not a safe activity for humans, as dolphins can spread bacteria to humans, and may become so aggressive towards humans that they bite or cause broken bones.
You may think that this project will be profitable for you, but the public is waking up to the cruel realities of animals held in captivity. Sea World has ceased breeding orcas in captivity because of public pressure. People are realizing that animals are not toys for our entertainment; they are beings which think, feel, and experience suffering like we do.
I urge you to end this unethical project immediately. Do not force any more animals to suffer.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo credit: dbmcclellan
Why This Video of a Little Boy Playing With a Captive Dolphin is Far From Sweet.Videos that aim to demonstrate how “sweet” it is when a child gets up close to a captive animal – however cute they may be on the surface – perpetuate the myth that captivity is good for the animal involved. This is the case with a new YouTube clip shared by a channel called ViralContent, which shows a toddler and a dolphin playing with a ball together.
Dolphins are extremely sensitive and intelligent creatures. In the wild, they live in tight-knit familial pods and remain close to their loved ones all their lives. They have an incredibly complex, sophisticated system of communicating with one another while the distance they travel each day can range from 40 to 100 miles.
In captivity, however, the natural instincts of these animals to hunt, play, be with family members, and enjoy their freedom are totally disrupted. Even the largest marine parks can provide dolphins with only 0.0001 percent of the space that would normally be available to them in the wild. Dolphins who are confined in such environments have been recorded displaying signs of boredom, depression and anger … and have even, in especially tragic situations, been known to take their own lives.
The child in the video above may be enjoying his experience with the dolphin, but he is sadly not coming close to understanding how these beautiful animals live when they are in their natural habitat. For more information on why you should never visit a marine park that holds dolphins captive, read some of the articles below.
- Dolphins Don’t Belong in Captivity – Here’s Why
- How Did We Get Here? The Evolution of Whale and Dolphin Captivity in the U.S.
- Why Breeding Dolphins and Orcas in Captivity is a Horrible Idea
- 4 Simple Ways YOU Can Help Dolphins in Captivity
