In Defense of Dolphin Captivity at AZA Aquariums

Dr. Paul Boyle is the Senior Vice President of Conservation & Education for the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA). We asked him about dolphins at AZA-accredited aquariums and marine parks, including where they come from and how they're cared for. Check out our interview below. To find out more about Dr. Boyle, visit his bio.

How many dolphins are in captivity in the United States?
In the United States as a whole, I think the current number is 410. That's plus or minus a couple. Only 181 of those are in AZA-accredited institutions. So, about a little less than half of the dolphins in captivity in the United States are at institutions that we represent. I think worldwide, there are about 1,800 dolphins in captivity. And of course, dolphins are not at all a threatened species. Their numbers in the wild are robust and they're doing fine.

Where do the dolphins in AZA-accredited facilities come from?
(The dolphins) at AZA institutions are largely the result of the breeding of dolphins in our facilities presently. Some of our facilities have quite large numbers of dolphins. Sea World has a very robust population. Normal breeding there — just ongoing in the population — is robust. Sea World and others in our membership have done a tremendous amount to perfect artificial insemination in dolphins. And so the short answer to the question is that in our facilities, they're coming from our facilities. Of course the federal government, the National Marine Fisheries Service, still has a process for — and on occasion does permit — wild collection of dolphins, what's called a "take" of dolphins. But those are very rare these days and have been for a number of years because our populations are basically self-sustaining in the long run.

The other dolphins in facilities in the United States... I don't know the history of those collections, although I can tell you that there are no dolphins in our facilities that come from the drives in Taiji. I think the overwhelming — and now, this is just an opinion, because I haven't done the research on those that are not at AZA institutions — but I think the overwhelming majority of the others outside of our institutions in North America also do not come from Taiji. I can't make an absolute statement about every other dolphin outside of our facilities because I just don't have the information.

In terms of "take from the wild," dolphins and all marine mammals are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Nobody can go out and just collect a dolphin in North American waters or those controlled by North America. The process for proposing or requesting a permit to take dolphins from the wild is long and arduous and very stringent. The National Marine Fisheries Service would require somebody proposing to collect dolphins from the wild to demonstrate scientifically that that take of those dolphins would have no detrimental impact on the wild population. So it's a very highly controlled process. But, our institutions are not really looking to collect dolphins from the wild these days because the breeding is so successful.

Is the AZA opposed to dolphin drive hunting? If so, what actions have you taken against it?
We are 100 percent opposed to dolphin drives. The action we have taken against it harkens back to 2004, and probably starting a year or so before that, when I was on the AZA board and made recommendations to the AZA board that the AZA should take a position against dolphins drives. Some of the discussion around that unanimous vote by the board to take a position had to do with the fact that there are many, many animal welfare situations around the world. The question was: was the AZA going to take a position on every single animal welfare issue? The way that discussion went — and I'll encapsulate it for you — was when one sees an animal welfare situation so inhumane and so abhorrent as the slaughter of living dolphins in the Taiji drives and does not speak out against it, it leaves the voice for animal welfare on the floor, and AZA should be taking positions against situations that are so undeniably inhumane. The board immediately agreed entirely and took a unanimous vote to take a position, and that position was in the form of a very short letter (that I'll read to you) sent to the Japanese prime minister and related fisheries officials from Sidney Butler, who was then executive director of AZA. And it said:

The following resolution has been considered and adopted by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association board of directors as of March 30, 2004. Zoos and aquariums accredited by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) are experts in animal care, wildlife conservation and educating the public about wildlife issues. The AZA strongly believes that the killing of dolphins and whales in drive fisheries is inhumane and should be terminated immediately.

That then was taken to the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) and put forward to that worldwide group, which prompted the WAZA group to take a similar position. In addition to that, it prompted the AZA to... Or, at the time, in association with AZA, I formed the website which is called www.actfordolphins.org. So anybody can go to that website. That website has now become part of AZA's website. You can find it by going to the AZA website or just type in actfordolphins.org. It'll take you there, and you'll see some background information, the AZA position statement... There's a very well thought-out scientist statement (that's signed by a few hundred scientists, I forget the exact number, but it's all there, you can see all their names) against the Japanese dolphin drive hunts.

And then on the homepage, there's a spot that says "what can you do?" And it allows people to click on a link and go to a petition that we have formed. The thinking about the petition was to actually focus the petition... It's addressed to Hilary Clinton this time because the American government is in constant negotiations with the Japanese government on a whole range of different things from trade to science to education and so on. So we felt that by addressing this petition to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton that it might allow us to get this dolphin drive situation on the radar screen of the U.S. State Department and allow them to possibly bring it to the fore in negotiations in a way that might be more powerful than individual scientists or our organization being able to do. We've got just a little over 130,000 signatures on it. When it gets to 250,000 we intend to deliver it to Hilary Clinton at the State Department. We've already advised the State Department that it's up there, we work with them all the time, and so they're aware of the fact that this is ongoing with them as the ultimate recipient.

How do you ensure that none of the dolphins found in AZA-accredited aquariums originate from areas of the world that practice dolphin hunting?
There's a number of layers to the answer to that. First of all, in order to bring a dolphin into the United States one needs a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and that permit requires articulation of the collection site of the source of the dolphins. The central government would be reluctant to allow anybody to bring dolphins in from areas where dolphins are being mistreated. All of our member institutions are animal welfare organizations. That's what these people are who are operating the accredited zoos and aquariums. They care about animals; that's why they're in this business. They care enough that they want the entire population to understand and care about these animals. So if you were to go to any one of our aquariums or facilities that had dolphins and talk to the curators in those areas, these are the people who are trying to protect dolphins, to save them, and they simply won't be going out to collect dolphins from an activity that's patently inhumane. In addition to that, I said that none of our member institutions are really out seeking to bring dolphins into the country because the population is self-sustaining. So really, it's not an issue at this point in time.

How do you respond to charges by Ric O'Barry that the captive dolphin industry as a whole fuels the dolphin hunting industry?
Well, not in the United States because of what I've said to you. We're not seeking to bring dolphins in. Are there facilities that have dolphins that shouldn't have dolphins and that might be seeking them? Yes. There has been a tremendous increase in dolphin swim programs throughout Southeast Asia, and those programs have very little... They don't have the controls over them that we have. (Are you aware) of our accreditation process? In a nutshell the AZA accreditation process, which each member institution has to go through from scratch every five years, is the most stringent accreditation process anywhere in the world. It goes into every area of an organization's operations — not only the animal care and welfare practices and the feeding and nutrition and veterinary care, but even looks at the institution's finances in order to ensure that they can continue to provide those standards of care and education to the public about the animals that we have. So our accreditation process is watching constantly over the care and welfare of all of the animals in our collections: not just dolphins, and not just intelligent animals, but even down to the level of insects and fishes. The same standards of animal care are run across the board of all of the animals that we have in our institutions.

When Ric is making these blanket statements, they're completely off the mark with respect to AZA-accredited institutions. There are facilities... And I have in my history the closing of facilities in parts of the northeastern United States where animals were in completely inappropriate conditions. And there are many roadside menageries where animals are not in anywhere near the conditions that they are at AZA-accredited institutions. It's very easy to cloud the conversation, and Ric does that sometimes. He's a very passionate person, but when he makes a blanket statement about all aquariums, then the statement he's making — I feel — is actually weakened because it's not correct when he's referring to AZA-accredited institutions in North America.

Are there guidelines for the care and welfare of dolphins in AZA-accredited facilities?
Yes. As I was saying, our accreditation standards have very lengthy and detailed sections addressing all aspects of the care and welfare of animals in general, and specifically marine mammals. When an institution applies for accreditation, they need to fill out a very detailed set of answers to an enormous number of questions about their veterinary care, the frequency of veterinary care, the nutrition of the animals and so on.

Before accreditation is granted, a review panel visits each institution. That review panel includes a veterinarian, a director of an institution and others with areas of expertise that relate to the operations of those facilities being reviewed. And they spend normally two days at that institution going through every square inch of it, looking at both the physical conditions of all of the animal exhibits but also, as I said, the veterinary and nutritional, but also the behavioral enrichment programs that surround those animals being in the exhibit's collection. They're looking for superior health. They spend a lot of time looking at husbandry expertise that's on the staff. They're looking at the welfare of the animals. They're looking at medical care that directly relates to the health of the animals. They're looking at records of possible illnesses that may have occurred and how they would treat it. They're looking at ongoing husbandry practices and what's called "animal enrichment."

The enrichment of the animals is basically treating the animals in ways that elicit naturally occurring behaviors, so hunting for food and spending time foraging for food. And all of the animals are kept in groups that have a tremendous amount of attention to the social behavior of the animals in the groups in the collection. So, looking at reproduction records, looking at behavioral ethograms — are these animals behaving normally as they would in the wild or are they behaving in ways that could possibly need more enrichment or a larger exhibit? Or any other way that their ongoing health and welfare can be attended to.

We have a number of committees at AZA that are constantly working on these topics. We have an animal welfare committee, an animal health committee populated by many veterinarians. We have nutrition groups who are studying the proper nutrition and diet for the animals. And in fact, most of what we know about animals like dolphins comes from studies that have come from studies that have been done largely in AZA-accredited or related institutions that work with us. It's very hard to study animals in the wild.

How do you keep captive dolphins "happy" and entertained?
Well that's a little bit of a repeat of the answer I was just talking about, environmental enrichment. Good health is an indicator of animals that are in good condition. Animals that are not in good condition — you've probably seen this yourself. On occasion you've seen a pet at somebody's house or in a city where you look at that dog or cat and you've thought, "That's not a happy animal." It's a very amorphous, subjective term. People are pretty good at looking at an animal and telling whether or not that animal is being treated properly and has good welfare conditions. Good health is a strong indicator that an animal is being treated well and is functioning properly. So that's why we spend so much time in our member institutions looking at the health, constantly monitoring health.

But enrichment is different. The analogy I would have is that you can have two humans working in office cubicles that are 4 feet by 5 feet. One is in a cubicle that has sort of blank walls and sits and processes paper all day, and generally you would guess that that person is not going to be very happy or comfortable or satisfied with their work environment after a very short period of time. On the other hand, you see the same sized cubicle and people decorate it with artwork or their kids' paintings, or they have some nice music, there's a plant, and it creates a space with no increase in square footage, but makes the person much more relaxed, calm, soothed and functioning in their work but also happy.

So what I was talking about before in terms of providing the animals toys (is the easy way to say it) or physical challenges that actually make that environment much more like their wild environment. Most animals spend an enormous part of their day foraging for food, and so we do things, like with walrus: we'll take a bucket and freeze fish in it so the walrus has to figure out a way to get the fish out of the ice. And dolphins similarly: we give them a large ball with holes cut out of it and they find ways to get the food out of the ball. It's not the only way that they're fed. There's no food ever withheld from any of these animals. Their food intake is monitored very closely because, in fact, dolphins and other marine mammals get all of the fresh water they need for their metabolism from the food that they eat. They don't drink seawater. So the quality of the fish that they're fed is highly monitored so that it doesn't get freezer burn (freezer burn is dehydrated fish).

But these foraging behaviors are one of the great ways of allowing animals to elicit their natural behaviors and to feel as if they're more in their own environment. So there's great attention to animal enrichment in the daily husbandry practices of animals cared for in AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums. And in fact, enrichment is required. It's a required part of our standards. We also have a behavioral scientific advisory group. Their job is to develop, prototype and test new enrichment mechanisms, and then to provide those to our member institutions to apply across the board.

So there's a tremendous attention to enrichment and other daily husbandry practices that provide excellent health and excellent animal welfare. You know, we have facilities that let their animals go in the ocean every day and the animals come back. It's a pretty good indicator that it's a nice place to be because the food is easy to get, they don't have to forage as hard as they have to do for it in the ocean, there aren't predators and other things that can kill them when they're in these exhibits. So these are actually good places for these animals to be.

What have scientists learned by studying dolphins in captivity?
There's a fellow called Sam Ridgway. He's often referred to as the "dolphin doctor." He's a veterinarian who worked on the West Coast. Sam started studying dolphins in captivity decades ago. In fact, most of what we know about dolphins — dolphin physiology, dolphin reproduction, dolphin digestion, dolphin behavior, dolphin sonar, the hydrodynamics of dolphins swimming — all of that has come from studying animals in what we call "captive situations."

So what about doing these studies in the wild? It's impossible to do quantitative physiological studies in the wild. When you're looking at say, dolphin respiration and you want to know: How long can they hold their breath? How long can they stay underwater? How deep can they go? Those physiological questions can't be answered in the wild. They can only be answered in situations where you've got a dolphin in a good facility and the dolphin is not stressed, it's in good health, it's being enriched, a naturally happy dolphin. Then that dolphin is also willing to participate in research.

And that's the way these studies are accomplished. Nobody's going to conduct research on a dolphin in one of our facilities if the dolphin isn't interested in participating in the study. It's really a two-way street. Dolphins are trained, they're intelligent animals. The training is another form of enrichment where dolphins are encouraged to elicit different behaviors. That's when they start engaging in some of the jumps and spins that they do in the wild. Sometimes in the wild the spins are to remove parasites. They don't have the parasites in captivity but they still can engage in those activities. The training becomes a form of enrichment. They're interested in doing different things so they're trained to learn how to do those repeatedly. So that brings the dolphin more into a mode where it's eager to work with a trainer to allow some study to go on. So that's where a lot of the studies on sonar and hydrodynamics and other parts of their health and physiology have been learned.

Do dolphins in captivity behave differently from dolphins in the wild? If so, in what ways?
I'm going to qualify this answer again and say that in the facilities where our member institutions have dolphins, I'll say no, they don't. We have high water quality and larger facilities, and the dolphins are highly enriched, and they're engaging in behaviors just like they do in the wild. Another thing that happens in AZA-accredited institutions is that they live longer in captivity than they do in the wild because they're not subject to the parasites, the predators and the endless need to forage for food in order to find what they simply need to metabolize. That all adds up to higher longevity in our exhibits.

The qualification has to do with dolphins in facilities that are not AZA-accredited. I can't really speak to those, but I have seen dolphins in facilities that are atrocious. They're too small, the animals are not enriched and they behave dramatically differently from dolphins in the wild. They are sometimes lethargic. It's not unlike seeing a human who's depressed from being in that cubicle with no decoration and no enrichment. There are dolphins in captivity that probably should be let go. Whether or not that would be good for their longevity, I don't know, because some have been in facilities in developing countries and other places where they may not be able to forage properly for food. But the dolphins in AZA-accredited facilities are in wonderful conditions and they behave remarkably like dolphins in the wild.

Ric O'Barry says that the best way to help dolphins is to not buy a ticket to a dolphin show. How do you respond to that?
There's that quote by Baba Dioum... You know it I'm sure? "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand and we'll understand only what we're taught." We live by that adage. The overwhelming — and I mean the over, overwhelming majority of people — never see a dolphin in the wild. And they never can see a dolphin in the wild. In Ric's earlier days, Ric trained all of the dolphins that performed on TV, on Flipper. Something in his past changed his approach to dolphins, but Ric for many, many years was a dolphin trainer and trained all of the dolphins that people years ago became familiar with and learned to love on that TV show.

Having said that the overwhelming majority of people will never get to see a dolphin in the wild, what is it that would make people give a darn about dolphins and their habitat? We believe, and we have the evidence that shows, that people care about things that they see. So when people see wildlife, they can form opinions about it. Their opinions can run the gamut from looking at the beauty and wonder of the animal to feeling some sense of relationship to that animal. And so when these animals are in very high-quality exhibits, like those at AZA-accredited institutions, and then you realize that 175 million people a year come to AZA-accredited institutions, zoo and aquariums in North America, to see animals, you realize that that's a way people can be taught something about the animals and begin to think about them and understand them, the things that they need in their environment. And then ultimately as we continue to interact with those audiences — that huge audience — in the end, we can engage those people through these exhibits where they learn about the animals and engage them in conservation engagement.

I think Ric's answer about, you know, "don't buy a ticket to a dolphin show" is really the proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the sand, thinking "well, if you don't buy a ticket to a dolphin show, then the problem will go away." I don't believe that at all. I believe the Japanese drives will still continue to go on. And I think the exhibits and the communications that we're doing through really high-quality exhibits where enormous attention is paid to their care and welfare, and those dolphins are then ambassadors that entreat people and thrill them and get them to understand something about the problems of coastal and ocean habitats, and through knowing the dolphins begin to care about the dolphins and the place where they live. That's the bridge by where we engage people in their becoming part of the solution to conservation problems. The government is never going to solve all the conservation problems. People will solve those problems. But people will only become engaged in helping to solve the problems if they know the habitat, and they're most interested in knowing the habitat through the wonder of the animals that live there.

So, I don't agree with what Ric says at all. I think it's 180 degrees in the wrong direction about dolphin presentations at AZA-accredited institutions. On the other hand, I would agree with Ric entirely if he's talking about dolphin exhibits where they're in appropriate conditions, and those places that I referred to before. It's unfortunate that Ric doesn't draw that distinction because I think he loses some of the believability in the way that he makes his presentation.

How was the AZA involved in the response to the Gulf Oil Spill?
All of our animals in the aquariums, or many of them, come from the sea. And so all of our institutions are constantly, long before the Gulf Oil Spill, have been educating people about the importance of protecting coastal and ocean habitats and watching out for pollution and runoff, and trying to engage people in helping to assistance in reducing those impacts. Specifically with regards to the Gulf Oil Spill, many of our institutions all around the Gulf participated actively in taking in animals. The Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans was the center, and worked with the Unified Command, on the rescue and cleaning and rehabilitation of sea turtles from all over the Gulf. The Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida was involved in working with animals that had been oiled in the Florida Center for Conservation. So all of those member institutions in the Gulf were involved intimately, and were in fact some of the lead organizations working with the Unified Command on everything that had to do with animal involvement in the oil spill.

A DIFFERENT VIEWPOINT: In Opposition to Dolphin Captivity