It doesn’t matter whether dolphins are caught in nets while swimming alongside boats, destabilised by “walls of sound » that disrupt their sonar, or if they are taken from the animals intended for the food markets. All methods of capture are violent and have often irredeemable consequences for the dolphins’ health.
Capture is a traumatic and even deadly experience for all animals. This is particularly true for cetaceans, who are torn from their natural environments to meet the needs of theme parks which are springing up in all corners of the globe.
Painful methods
Dolphins are easy targets as they can be spotted in the ocean and have the unfortunate habit of swimming alongside boats. The hunters who track them only need to follow them until they grow tired, chase them into shallow waters and then catch them at will in their nets.
Other methods which are no less painful, using sound, are known to deafen dolphins and disrupt their natural radar making them vulnerable.
A traumatic experience
Regardless of the method used, it has been provided that the stress levels caused by capture can cause cardiac damage, bringing with it paralysis or even death. In all cases, captures involve physical suffering, the long term physiological effects of which deserve study. Apart from this physical trauma, we must take account of the stress on an animal which is torn from a group with a perfectly established social structure where each individual has a role play. A dolphin’s links to its group are extremely complex and the separation of one individual may cause turmoil within the group.
An endless trade
For the last few years dolphin hunting has become a very profitable activity. One Voice has observed the presence of trainers and other purchasers from dolphinariums doing business during the annual massacres organised in Japan, the Faroe Islands or the Solomon Islands to satisfy the food market. These macabre gatherings provide the perfect opportunity to “pick up” a few individuals effortlessly on the pretext of saving them from a violent death. They are then condemned to a life of captivity and deprivation.
Today, a live adult dolphin sells for over 30 000 dollars, while a dead one is only worth 400 dollars.
The bottle-nose dolphin and orca are the most hunted
There is little data available to establish the exact number of dolphins taken each year. To preserve their economic interests, the countries involved in this type of fishing remain very discreet.
The bottle-nose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) is the most hunted and the one that appears most in marine parks, closely followed by the orca (Orcinus orca). According to the WDCS (the association for the protection of dolphins and whales), there are 49 captive orcas in the world and hundreds of bottle-nose dolphins.
As long as there are dolphinariums, dolphins, which are a protected species, will be taken from the ocean.
In Japan alone, a thousand cetaceans were captured between 1986 and 1999 to supply some 40 dolphinariums – and there are nearly 200 around the world !
