Dolphinaria-Free Europe Coalition: It's a No From Me

Perhaps the most frustrating thing when reading these kinds of reports in the popular press is that there seems to be no acknowledgement of the independent and objective research that has been published as regards this matter. It seems that specific quotes by animal-rights supporters are being excepted verbatim and no effort been made to counter such specific claims with easily available scientific evidence.

The BBC's environment correspondent Claire Marshall recently reported onthe contentious suspension of the filming of a TV reality show in Portugal entitled "Dolphins with the Stars" due to a campaign by various animal-rights groups operating under the umbrella name of the Dolphinaria-Free Europe Coalition. This consortium of groups are currently lobbying to shut down all exhibits of dolphins and whales within the zoos and aquariums of Europe. This campaign is being orchestrated by the group ENDCAPwho are opposed to the concept of keeping wild animals in captivity

  

Ironically, is interesting to note that the animal-rights groups involved in this particular publicity stunt are often heard claiming that animals such as dolphins have no effective protection when in captive care. Yet, in this instance, the Portuguese authorities were concerned the programme may have contravened European zoo legislation and asked for the zoo involvement in this program to be suspended. Therefore, placing some doubt that the animals at least in this facility do have some oversight under the law to protect them.

Although, the actions of the various animal-rights lobby groups has very little to do with animal welfare but more to do promoting their own animal-rights political agenda in seeking the prohibition of animals displayed in European facilities which they state are "exploitative".

The reporting by the BBC did not really help balance the claims made by various members of the animal-rights lobby led by Daniel Turner of the Born Free Foundation who stated:

"Whales and dolphins are hugely intelligent and social species, which when deprived of space and environmental complexity, develop abnormal behaviours such as stereotypic behaviour (repetitive behaviour without any reason), heightened aggression and in some cases, early mortality."

It is unfortunate the BBC did not seem to make an effort to garner other opinions on the statements made by Daniel Turner from other professionals and scientists working with marine mammals who may certainly have a different opinion on what he stated.

To compound this problem the BBC reporter went on to voice her own opinion on the matter that seems to support much of the dubious allegations made by Daniel Turner:

"For a long time there has been a debate about the ethics and effect of confinement on cetaceans - the family of aquatic mammals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises - especially as more is discovered about their intellectual and cognitive abilities. They are seen as among the more intelligent species on earth. They have complex social networks, recognise themselves in mirrors and have been shown to keep track of more than 100 words."

The disappointing statement of the reporter is clearly quite disturbing. More so as it demonstrates a lack of any actual research being undertaken before making this secondary quote as there is quite a bit of independent and objective research on the welfare of captive dolphins in the public domain that could have been easily reviewed.

As a case in point, in 1986 UK government commissioned an independent scientific investigation into the welfare of dolphins including the ethics and welfare of captive dolphins. This report "A Review of Dolphinaria" by Dr Margaret Klinowska and Dr Susan Brown was published in 1986 after extensive research both in the published peer review literature and field research observing dolphins in captive environments. It should be pointed out that if Drs Klinowska and Brown had found evidence to suggest that cetaceans (dolphins and whales) could not be successfully kept in captive care they had the power to recommend the banning of the keeping of these animals.

However, the conclusion of this report was that there was no evidence that dolphins could not be successfully maintained in captive care.  Therefore (and with the guidance of the subsequent Steering Committee) welfare regulations for the keeping of cetaceans were introduced and incorporated into the U.K.'s Zoo Licensing Act.

More recently independent research was commissioned by the Ontario provincial government in Canada who asked marine mammal scientist Dr.David Rosen (assisted by Dr Heather Koopman and Dr.Colleen Reichmuth) to look into the issue of the welfare of marine mammals with a special emphasis on dolphins.

The report "Developing Standards of Care for Marine Mammals in Captivity and Recommendations Regarding How Best to Ensure the Most Humane Treatment of Captive Cetaceans" was published in May 2014. Here again the researchers could find compelling evidence that prohibited the keeping of the smaller cetaceans in captivity. Nevertheless, in a similar vein to the "Review of Dolphinaria", they codified recommendations for the welfare of these animals that could be placed within a structured legal framework to ensure the consistency of welfare standards for these animals throughout the province of Ontario.

It is interesting to note that the issue of abnormal (stereotypical) behaviour in dolphins mentioned by Daniel Turner is addressed in the two reports cited above and do not appear commonplace and seem displayed under novel situations.

Three cases of stereotypic head-pressing behaviour in captive bottlenose dolphins are described by Greenwood (1977). The animals had been put into small enclosures, again for medical treatment, and the behaviours ceased on return to large pools. Bel'kovich, Krushinskaya and Gurevich (1969) note behavioural changes in animals moved to isolation in small research pools and Caldwell and Caldwell (1972) describe similar symptoms in a show animal in, similar circumstances (see above). (Klinowska and Brown, 1986)

Moreover, instances of high mortality (survivorship) of bottlenose dolphins also mentioned by Turner were found to be the not the case when scientifically reviewed as far back as 1986 by Klinowska and Brownand this has been replicated by other researchers.

Predictably, the article had to mention the animal-rights film "Blackfish"despite the fact that this documentary was exclusively focused on killer whales and not bottlenose dolphins the species being displayed in ZooMarine.

Furthermore, since it is release the film "Blackfish" has received considerable amounts of criticism for both its presentation and factual content.

However, this comes as no surprise as the groups opposing the programme "Dolphin with the Stars" have an active agenda to extend the original remit of such films as "Blackfish" to encompass many other animal species they wish to see prohibited currently displayed in zoos and aquariums.

The article is of course correct in citing the fact that the majority of the animals in the EU have been acquired through captive breeding. In fact, no animals have been imported from the wild to mainland Europe for over a decade with the bulk of imports ceasing in the mid-1980's (see note at the end of this article). The contention that the EU would now allow imports of wild caught cetaceans from outside European waters is extremely contentious.

Certainly, animals from drive fisheries in places such as the Japan are unlikely to get import permits as such capture operations would be considered inhumane. This has been the position of the United States since 1993 as regards animals derived from drive fisheries been imported into this country for public display. In any event, why would European zoological collections want to court such controversy when animals can be acquired successfully through captive breeding programmes.

As to the claims of the intellectual prowess of dolphins it is expedient to cite the recent published work in 2013 by Dr Justin Gregg: "Are Dolphins Really Smart: the mammal behind the myth". This book deftly rationalises the contention of the elevated intellect of dolphins that seems to pervade the popular psyche - this not least due to the controversial research work of Dr John Lilly in the 1960s with dolphins. It should be noted that mainstream scientists working with dolphins have for a number years disputed the claims of the likes of Dr Lilly.

Moreover such things as social complexity, self recognition (mirror experiments) and symbol recognition are not those exclusive domain of dolphins and has been seen in many and diverse species of bird and mammal including elephants, chimpanzeesand magpies.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing when reading these kinds of reports in the popular press is that there seems to be no acknowledgement of the independent and objective research (such as that cited above) that has been published as regards this matter. It seems that specific quotes by animal-rights supporters are being accepted verbatim and no effort seems to be made to counter such specific claims with what is in many instances easily accessed  scientific evidence.

As an example, one only has to look at Dolphinaria-Free Europe's website. Here they present a quote from a report EU Zoo Enquiry: Dolphinaria they co-authored with other animal-rights organisations in 2014.

Trade data records indicate that 285 live cetaceans have been imported into the EU between 1979 and 2008, in spite of a prohibition under EU CITES Regulation 338/97 on imports of cetaceans into the EU for primarily commercial purposes.

The issue with this statement is that it is misleading and factually distorted. Unfortunately, this is a common problem with these kinds of self published, quasi-scientific reports by the animal-rights lobby.

The statement seems to give the impression that this was homogeneous data between 1979 and 2008 as regards animals being imported which not correct. Unfortunately, "EU Zoo Enquiry: Dolphinaria" does not breakdown the figures it presents either into years or species.  Therefore, it cannot be ascertained as to what animals were imported either in numbers or years.

  

Further, the presentation of the time span of 29 years in EU history is also deceptive. In 1979, there were only nine members of the European Union. However, by 2008 there were 28: an increase in membership by 68%. Many of these new members already had zoos and aquaria that displayed dolphins such as Portugal, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Malta, Bulgaria and Romania which would now be added in this data set.

Putting all these facts together, it can be seen that the statement from this report is statistically of no value and has been produced to mislead not to inform the reader.

Whatever the atheistic merits of a television series entitled "Dolphins with the Stars" it seems unlikely that this would involve any compromise of the welfare of animals involved by ZooMarine  Moreover, it is possible that such a show would have been able to incorporate scientific and educational information within its framework for the benefit of the public as claimed by ZooMarine. Bearing in mind is that many people who watch entertainment shows such as this may well not be the same type of audience who would watch a wildlife documentary.

In conclusion, it was never the intention of the EU Zoo Directive to arbitrarily close zoos down. The whole idea of this legislation was to ensure good standards of animal husbandry and that zoos and aquariums promoted both education and conservation within these facilities. The use of the EU Zoo Directive by animal-rights groups such as ENDCAP and their various followers is not that of honest brokers trying to support and improve standards within zoological collections. Their clearly stated objectives is to see zoological collections closed down as they are anathema to these groups political ideology. No improvement in animal welfare would ever placate these organisations and their behaviour should be noted as belligerent mischief making and nothing more.

Notes on the importation of wild caught dolphins into the EU: The last importation of wild caught bottlenose dolphins into the EU was a number of dolphins imported to the Lithuania Sea Museum- the last of which was caught in the Black Sea 1998.  In addition, six animals were imported to Mediterraneo Marine Park in Malta from Cuba in 2000 and number of dolphins and two beluga were imported to L'Oceanogràfic in Valencia in Spain in 2003. It should be noted that generally most wild caught animals displayed in Europe were imported prior to 1990 with the  majority of dolphins now exhibited having been acquired through captive breeding programmes. In fact, some facilities such as ZooMarine, Italy and Palmitos Parkin the Canary Islands display animals entirely derived from captive breeding. As far as killer whales are concerned of the 12 animals displayed in the EU only one "Freya" was acquired by wild capture in Iceland in 1982 with one other being a rehabilitated animal "Morgan" that stranded in the Netherlands in 2010 which has been deemed unreleasable due to her age and hearing impairment.  Reference: Cetabase and CITES Database.

Jane Goodall: GMO & Echolocating Dolphins

Her allegation that the sounds the animals produce when using their echolocation bounce back from the walls of their tanks in their exhibits is correct but that is exactly how echolocation works.

Dr Jane Goodallis a scientist who became famous for her research in primatology particularly her work with wild chimpanzees in Africa specifically Gombe in Tanzania when she began her studies in the early 1960s. In 1986,  she published her first major work which was an accumulation of 25 years of original research in The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behaviour. She went on to found the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 who amongst their mission statements state:

"Improve global understanding and treatment of great apes through research, public education and advocacy"

In later years, she became something of a wildlife celebrity and broadened her interests into other areas of environmentalism and animal-rights. 

From 1998 to 2008, she was a director of the animal-rights group Advocates for Animals: a group that was originally founded as the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection and was later rebranded as OneKind. She resigned this post in 2008 for reasons that some have suggested was due to her support of a new chimpanzee exhibit at Edinburgh zoo which went against OneKind's ethos of: "keeping animals in captivity for entertainment".   

She was later involved in more controversy with accusations of plagiarism in her 2012 book "Seeds of Hope".   

More recently she has been criticised for her support of "Altered Genes, Twisted Truth" an anti-GMO polemic written by the American lawyer Steve Druker. To this end, her position was also criticised in the sceptical pod cast Skeptic's Guide to the Universe under the section "The Dumbest Thing I Heard This Week"
 

However, Dr Goodall's most recent foray into areas of controversy is her attack on the SeaWorld marine parks and its keeping of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) reported in the Huffington Post and picked up by a number of other media outlets.   

This is not the first time that she has attacked the practice of keeping cetaceans in captive care as over a year ago she also attacked the non-profit Vancouver Public Aquarium for their public display of cetaceans. Unfortunately, there seems to be no evidence that she has visited either Vancouver Aquarium (or indeed the SeaWorld parks) or directly spoken to their staff and scientists regarding her concerns despite an open invitation to do so.

Of course, the major problem with Dr Goodall's vociferous opinions is that she does not actually have any direct research knowledge of whales and dolphins either in aquaria or the wild as she remains above all an expert on African fauna and specifically primates.

This is clearly obvious in her comments regarding dolphin echolocation(sonar). Further, she confuses the echolocation of dolphins with their communication skills - the two are unrelated.

Her statement that the sounds the animals produce when using their echolocation bounce back from the walls of their exhibits is correct - that is exactly how echolocation works - but at this point her understanding sadly falters.

Dolphin echolocation is very sophisticated and it is this very sophistication that make them exquisite tools the dolphins exploit when hunting or exploring their environment; the sophistication of the dolphins echolocation is believed by some to be the reason these animals have complex brains.

In using their echolocation, dolphins are fully capable of controlling their echolocation beam in both direction and strength (volume); it is not a blunt instrument and animals have total control of this function in a similar way we humans can vary the volume and pitch when we are talking. As stated, echolocation is used is for hunting or investigating objects.

Further, it should be realised that dolphins also have extremely good eyesight both above and below the surface (echolocation only works within the aquatic environment) and will sometime rely on their eye-sight and not their echolocation skills.

Moreover, there is no evidence to support Goodall's claim that dolphins in captivity live in an "acoustic hell" and such erroneous beliefs appear to have been lifted directly from animal-rights websites and are not accurate.  Dolphins actively control their sonar it is nether autonomous or an unconscious sense.

It is somewhat ironic that if Dr Goodall had taken the opportunity to research dolphin echolocation she may well have been surprised to learn that much of the pioneering research into this ability was undertaken in captivity in laboratories and aquariums; originally by scientists such as Arthur McBride at the Marine Studios (Marineland of Florida) in the 1940s and later Dr Winthrop Kellogg in the 1950s (Au, 1993). It is a further irony that prior to this Dr Kellogg had also undertaken chimpanzee language research and Dr Goodall may well have been familiar with his early endeavours.

In fact, if Dr Goodall and her followers are so concerned about the welfare of dolphins such as killer whales they need to be looking to the wild and groups living on the eastern Pacific as these appear to be having serious problems far more pressing than animals cosseted in a well run aquarium.

Finally, her comments that dolphins "have a emotion like ours" perhaps reveals how far she as a scientist has drifted from viewing things with true objectivity. 

To this end, Dr Goodall would be advised to review Dr Justin Gregg's recent book regarding dolphin cognition "Are Dolphins Really Smart: the Mammal behind the Myth" published in 2013.

In this book, Dr Greg puts into perspective the fallacy of the much vaulted intelligence of dolphins which is greatly exaggerated. He primarily lays the fault of this erroneous perception at the doors of neuroscientist DrJohn Lilly and his work with dolphins in the 1960s. Lilly was a man who became over time an incredibly controversial figure who (after the funding dried up for his dolphin language work from groups such as NASA) went on and experimented with floatation chambers and drugs. He even injected LSD into dolphins to see what effect it would have on them.

Unfortunately, Lilly later became a guru for the counter-culture movement in which he perpetuated and extolled many views which by this point had strayed considerably from rational science into the world of metaphysics and sadly pseudo-science.

Finally, it would be more accurate to maintain that chimpanzees are probably cognitively more sophisticated than dolphins. Which makes Dr Goodall's position on dolphins in captive care even more disappointing and contradictory in that she seems to be willing to accept and support chimpanzees in zoological establishments such as Edinburgh zoo; support elephants being transferred to a zoo rather an animal-rights run sanctuary but illogically attacks the keeping of dolphins in all well-run aquariums or zoos.

More of dolphin echolocation HERE