Squalid Dolphin Park in Bahrain
If you are taking a trip to Bahrain in the near future, please do Not visit this Dolphin Park.
The captivity industry exists to make money and to fulfill the demand for interactive experiences with dolphins. Dolphins are often captured from the wild, torn away from their families and the only world that they know, to supply marine parks, dolphinariums and aquariums with their star attractions. What dolphin enthusiasts must remember is that once the thrill of swimming with a dolphin or watching dolphin acrobatics wears off, they will go home but the dolphins are trapped for life, forced to perform the same interactions day after day in silent desperation
No matter what country you are from or how old you are, people have been intrigued and entertained by dolphins for centuries. The dolphin captivity industry has proliferated as a direct result of our collective love of dolphins and our desire to see them up close and personal. Ironically, if people realized the inherent cruelty involved with capturing and confining these magnificent creatures, most would never dream of participating in such a spectacle.
"Education" and "conservation" are popular sayings used by these parks and swim-with-dolphins programs. However, marine parks have historically shown no more desire to conserve marine mammals in the wild than they have in educating the public.
In certain parts of the world such as some countries in Europe, the tide is rapidly turning away from keeping dolphins in captivity and declining ticket sales will show that the general public will not support an industry founded upon animal suffering and exploitation. Other areas have seen a growth in the number of swimming with dolphins and dolphin assisted therapy programmes. This growth has been fuelled by continued captures from the wild. Throughout the 1990s, wild-caught Russian dolphins were exported to countries around the world, especially where animal protection laws were lax or non-existent, and used to generate money for the people trading them, who even offered them for sale on the internet. Belugas (white whales) are still captured in Russian waters for display in aquariums overseas.
Which brings us to the Dolphin Park in Manama - Bahrain?
This park was probably one of the world's worst facilities holding dolphins in captivity. I say was because in AUGUST, the facility was destroyed by a fire. Nevertheless, local media reports the owner's plan to rebuild the facility. We say it should never be allowed to re open ever again.
Dolphin Care UK along with other environmental non-governmental organizations, including Cetacea Defence, Cetacean Society International, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, Marine Connection and the Humane Society International are totally against this "park" ever reopening.
In May 2006, we were approached by someone living in Bahrain who was concerned about the dolphins being kept in this "Dolphin Park". Further investigation revealed their confinement in extremely poor and squalid conditions, especially considering the complex environment these animals would normally live in and the vast area they would ordinarily inhabit in their wild environment. Being kept in these conditions could make the animals anti-social and aggressive towards each other and towards any audience member or people coming into contact with them. We had heard reports about a dolphin biting a man who ventured too close. We were also told about scars and marks on the dolphins at the park, which suggests that close confinement may have been having a serious effect on them. Photographs revealed just how cramped the holding pens for the animals were and demonstrate the shabbiness of the place, where little or no maintenance has been carried out and broken and missing tiles from the pool edges could be seen, as well as a kind of slime coating the metal of the animals' holding facilities.
While Dolphin Park has boasted in the local media about how many people visit the facility, suggesting it is a place of education, we beg to differ. We agree that the general public should be educated about dolphins, but they would learn more about these amazing animals seeing them in their own environment, the open sea. This is where they belong, not kept in concrete tanks in squalid conditions as they were in Bahrain's Dolphin Park.
In the wild, dolphins live in a rich ocean environment. Here, they enjoy the natural rhythms of the sea, the tides, and the currents. Throughout the day they hear many different sounds characteristic of the ocean world, such as waves breaking against the shore and the clicks and whistles of their pod members. The natural rhythm and wide-ranging sounds of the ocean world are an essential aspect of a dolphin's life. In captivity dolphins are kept in small tanks in degraded facilities and even in shopping centres and travelling circuses. These dolphins will never again experience the most elementary elements of nature: sunlight, for instance, and rain, live fish, and real seawater. The only sound they hear is the strange, excessive noise of generators, water pumps, loud disco music, cheering dolphin trainers with their whistles, and applauding audiences.
In the wild a dolphin's only boundary is where the ocean meets the shore. In captivity you'll find dolphins confined in cramped conditions like the park in Manama, where they can no longer move freely. Having to do dolphin shows several times a day, they are confined to a very small body of water, far away from their pods, with nowhere to swim to and nothing to explore.
We suspect these dolphins were taken from the wild and not born in captivity and that maybe, given the opportunity, they could be returned successfully to the wild through a dedicated release programme.
Dolphin Park opened in 1998 displaying bottlenose dolphins from Russia's Black Sea. After the rapid death of two of the imported dolphins, two more were added, and at least one beluga. At least four Russian dolphins have died at Dolphin Park. Prior to AUGUST's fire, the facility held one beluga and two dolphins, at least one of these a humpbacked dolphin or Sousa.
CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, reports the export of a Sousa from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, listing its origin as Russia. But there are no Sousa in Russian waters. Furthermore, Sousa are listed on Appendix I of CITES, which prohibits commercial trade in these animals. And yet the CITES export report lists the trade as commercial. But Bahrain is not a "Party" to CITES and does not therefore have to abide by its rules.
August's fire resulted in the death of a sea lion held at Dolphin Park, after it was reportedly unable to escape from its locked cage on the stage of the show pool. Recent photographs reveal that Dolphin Park held two sea lions. The fate of the second animal is unknown. Many questions remain unanswered.
In light of our concerns, we call on the authorities in Bahrain to prevent further suffering of animals at Dolphin Park and not to allow the reopening of the facility. No animals should be made to endure such conditions in any marine park or aquarium anywhere in the world.