Bringing Kids to Dolphin Shows is Bad Education, Says Experts

Have you ever brought your kids to marine parks to watch dolphin shows with them? Or, has your child joined a school field trip to one of those theme parks where there are dolphins or whales? Did you think that it was good for their education to see these marine animals in these venues?

Ric O’Barry, world-renowned Marine Mammal Specialist and dolphin advocate, said in a press conference in Manila last Friday, September 14, 2012, that bringing kids to ocean-themed parks with captive dolphins and whales is bad education.

“What are the children learning from dolphin tricks?” asked O’Barry. “They’re learning that abusing nature is okay. It’s really a form of bad education.”

He said that it’s like telling the children that it’s alright to take these animals from their natural habitats and imprison them in ocean-themed parks because they are nothing more than performing circus clowns. Thus, children walk away from these parks miseducated after their field trips.

The 1991 Environmental Achievement Awardee of the United States Committee for the United Nations Environmental Program (US/UNEP) shared this analogy, “To teach a child not to step on a butterfly is as important to the child as it is to the butterfly. The same is true with the dolphin shows.”

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Trixie Conception, Regional Director for Asia Pacific of Earth Island Institute, said in a documentary showed during the press conference that dolphins trained to perform in dolphin shows are deprived of food for certain periods so that they would obey their trainers. Thus, these highly-intelligent creatures are not really happy to perform in these shows. They seem happy; but the truth is they are not. They only obey their trainers because they want to be fed and do not want to starve.

O’Barry knows this very well for he used to capture and train dolphins in the past. He was the former senior trainer of the dolphins in the hit TV series Flipper. The death of the dolphin that often played Flipper, however, altered the course of his life. He believes that the dolphin Kathy committed suicide due to depression. The dolphin died while in his arms. From then on, he committed his life to freeing dolphins in captivity and raising the awareness of people of its ill effects. He founded The Dolphin Project and also sits as the Director of Save Japan Dolphins Campaign. Concurrently, he also works as a Marine Mammal Specialist at the Earth Island Institute. He is also the author of the book Behind the Dolphin Smile, and co-authored To Free a Dolphin with Keith Colbourne, which was featured in the controversial and award-winning documentary The Cove which exposed the yearly hunt, trade, and slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan.  

O’Barry said that some of the dolphins who are captured in this cove are traded to countries like the Philippines so that these dolphins can be trained for dolphin shows and placed in ocean-themed parks. Dolphins who do not qualify for dolphin shows are killed inhumanely. He therefore shares this knowledge to the public wherever he goes so that people would know that they can help stop these practices in their own simple way.

Experts featured in the documentary showed by Earth Island Institute during the press conference said that observing marine animals like dolphins and whales in ocean-theme parks will not really help students know these animals better because the animals are not in their natural environment, and therefore their behavior is not natural. They encouraged parents and educators to instead bring the kids/students to the marine mammals’ natural habitat for the students to better understand the real nature of these animals and their role in the ecosystem.  The best place for these wild animals is still in the wild, experts say. Scientific studies show that marine animals like dolphins have a shorter life span when held in captivity, due mainly to capture shock, exhaustion, and stress-related illnesses.

O’Barry and other marine mammal advocates lauded Cong. Raymond Palatino for coming up with House Resolution 2759 which urges the Department of Education and Commission on Higher Education to ban school field trips to theme parks with captive dolphins and whales that come from cruel and inhumane sources. He said that these parks target students and encourage school administrators to buy tickets in bulk to avail of discounts.  

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“Such exhibits risk teaching children the wrong values that keeping wild animals for profit, extracting them from their natural habitat and family, and cruelty to other creatures are acceptable,” Palatino states in his resolution. He further said that wild animals like dolphins and whales pose significant danger to the public watching the shows as well as to the trainers due to their innate unpredictable and uncontrollable behavior compounded by the stress of being imprisoned.

Ric O’Barry capped his visit to the Philippines by joining other dolphin advocates in a dolphin mural painting event last September 15 at the Quezon City High School led by A.G. Saño, WWF Hero of the Environment for 2011 and founder of the Dolphins Love Freedom network.  More than one hundred volunteers, including students from various schools and universities and families, enjoyed painting and learning about dolphins.

Saño and his friends from the Dolphins Love Freedom network have been painting dolphin murals on walls around the country and abroad, including walls of schools and universities, since he saw The Cove. His original goal was to paint 23,000 dolphins as a tribute to the dolphins killed every year in Taiji, Japan. He has already achieved this goal but he persists in painting more dolphins and murals about Mother Nature to help educate the public, especially the youth, that dolphin captivity and slaughter is wrong and that it’s part of our responsibility to care for God’s creation. 

Some of the schools who have supported Saño in his advocacy by organizing mural painting sessions in their schools are the following: Akademia, Candent Learning House, Cradle of Joy, Create Learning Center, Creative Beginners, Diliman Preparatory School, Hatch Education, Headway School for Giftedness, Holly Joy, Learning Tree, Keys Grade School, Mind Builders, Miriam Preschool, Multiple Intelligences, Our Lady of Lourdes Child Development Center, and Raya.  

Dolphin advocates like O’Barry and Saño hope that Palatino’s proposal would be passed into law.