Dolphins don’t express emotions with their facial muscles.
Their mouth is just shaped in a way that we humans misinterpret as a smile. So even when a dolphin is suffering from high stress, visitors to marine parks often come away thinking that the dolphin is having a good time.
This is usually far from the truth.
Forever curious, forever free?
27 dolphins were captured from the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Some were transported to Langkawi.While others were kept in Subic bay, Philippines.
When two of the dolphins in Langkawi died, Resorts World moved them all to the Philippines.
These 25 are now waiting for their new enclosures to be ready at Sentosa, Singapore. And what is their new life going to be like? All we can be sure of is that it will be nothing like their past one.
Dolphins are highly social creatures that are accustomed to being in family pods.
Above: Diving among free dolphins
Free Dolphins Roam Thousands of Kilometers Together
They are sensitive mammals capable of great emotion and feeling and intelligence. In the wild, they roam thousands of kilometers of ocean together. They are used to exploring three-dimensional underwater worlds full of sounds, sights, movement, colour, varying landscapes and changing currents.
To abduct these animals from the wild, to rip them from their homes, to snatch them away from their mates and relatives and put them in a box is especially cruel. To use them for entertainment, for generating money from the tourist trade, now that’s downright exploitative. But that’s exactly what Resorts World wants to do.
Proud, Intelligent Creatures Begging for Dead Fish
Their world has already shrunk to a square sea pen, devoid of variety, bereft of sea life. They can’t hunt anymore. They beg and jump for handouts of dead fish, which arrive in buckets. There’s nowhere for them to roam, except back and forth. And nothing to do except turn round and round and go slowly mad.
Ric O’Barry, the marine mammal specialist has also offered his help to rehabilitate and release the dolphins back to the wild, in the Solomon Islands, off Papua New Guinea by Resorts World.
Many marine parks subject their mammals to hunger so they will perform for their food. Jumping through hoops, tailwalking and playing ball are trained behaviors that do not occur in the wild. Confined animals who abuse themselves (banging their heads against the walls) are creating stimuli which their environment cannot supply.
Above: Wild dolphins captured by Resorts World and kept in “training tanks” to prepare them as specimens for the tourist trade
Dolphins in captivity tend to develop stereotypical behaviors (swimming in a repetitive circle pattern, with eyes closed and in silence) because of boredom and confinement. This is equivalent to the swaying and pacing of primates, lions, tigers and bears confined in cages.
Won’t you please help us and Say NO TO CAPTIVITY. ~RESORT WORLD FREE THE DOLPHINS.~
