Captive Cetaceans: A Handbook for Campaigners - Whale and ...

animals, of species, and of desensitising people to the value of animals is too great"
(cited in Norton et al, 1995).
According to Lindberg and Lindberg (cited in Norton et al, 1995), "Lacking natural
culling processes, captive populations contain individuals that have suffered
reproductive incapacitation from advanced age, disease, or inherited disorders.
Although some of these individuals may retain a social value to conspecifics, nonreproductive
adults in carefully managed captive populations are usually regarded as
surplus to those programmes and considered dispensible." Furthermore, "those that
met their genetic quota while still relatively young would become surplus to
propagation efforts long before their natural lives were over."
It is certain that many captive pinniped species are considered "surplus". It is now
clear that there is an excess of bottlenose dolphins as well. In August 1994, the
Florida facility Ocean World closed its doors, facing the task of relocating twelve
bottlenose dolphins. Since no other U.S. facility offered to take the animals, all were
sold to a facility in Honduras, where two died shortly after arrival. Sixteen months
later, eight of the ten remaining animals escaped from their sea pen during a storm.
The U.S. Navy, under orders by the Department of Defence to "down-size" its marine
mammal programme, still has animals to place. In April 1995, four bottlenose
dolphins, two from Marine World Africa USA and two from Chicago's Brookfield
Zoo, were exported to a previously unknown facility in Portugal under the guise of a
breeding loan. No animal exchanged between U.S. and foreign facilities for the
purpose of such loans has ever returned. As of April 1995, eight U.S. marine parks
have not yet reported the gender of 22 captive-born bottlenose dolphins; some of the
births occurred as early as 1992.
In August 1995, the military requested transfer of six Navy dolphins to the foreign
swim-with facility "Dolphin Quest", operated by Jay Sweeney in French Polynesia
near Tahiti. The Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, aged 14 to 21 years, are believed to be
far too old to be considered safe with participants, especially considering their
unknown military background. Because zoos remain extremely sensitive to the
public's perception of "culling" excess animals, one option of dealing with surplus
populations is to transfer unwanted individuals to zoos abroad, where spaces are
available, but standards for care and maintenance may be non-existent, lax, or
unenforcable. Thus, today's zoos and aquariums are now being forced into an 'any
port in the storm' policy. Even the former Soviet Union is seeking homes for its once
top-secret military dolphins, currently held in the Ukraine port of Sevastopol in the
Black Sea (Poletz, 1995).
Representatives of Chicago's Brookfield Zoo acknowledged the surplus factor,
suggesting that, "it has become desirable to develop a reliable and reversible method
of contraception which would allow for increased flexibility in management"
(Messinger et al, 1995). Contraception was also recommended to "allow for an
alternative to relocation or separation."
Therefore, because a surplus already exists, future captures, imports, exports
and continued breeding can hardly be justified.
59