“Together with us, encourage Jumbo to stop selling tickets for the Dolphinarium”, reads the website of animal organization World Animal Protection. The organization states that ‘stunting with wild animals is not acceptable’.
Unlike in the wild
“I will leave out details about dolphin welfare, that is not my expertise,” says Fadia Al Abbar, marine biologist and researcher at Wageningen University. “But we do know that dolphins in captivity, such as in the Dolphinarium, cannot live like dolphins live in the wild.”
Al Abbar is currently researching dolphins in the Azores, near Portugal. “We follow dolphins for hours,” she says. “Sometimes ten hours a day. This allows us to see very well what they do, how they behave in the wild.”
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Through that kind of research, Al Abbar and her colleagues know that dolphins live in groups in the wild. “They do everything together, they forage together, they hunt together, and they care for their calves together.”
And those groups are large: sometimes there are more than a hundred. “That’s not possible in the Dolfinarium, they don’t live with that much there.” In addition, dolphins swim not only long, but also far. “We have seen that they cover 50 kilometers within five and a half hours. That is not possible in a basin.”
New accommodations
Today reported the Algemeen Dagblad that the Dolfinarium must be completely renovated by 2029 at the latest: outgoing minister Carola Schouten of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality demanded that after a critical report of the Zoos Committee.
The enclosures of the dolphins and sea lions need to be enlarged, both in width and depth. In addition, there must be some extra living spaces for the animals and the Dolfinarium must work with a sandy bottom and, for example, rain effects, so that the environment of the animals becomes more natural. Earlier this year, the Dolfinarium stopped with ‘circus-like shows’.
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Reaction Jumbo and Dolphinarium
The Jumbo wants to offer customers ‘a wide and diverse range of outings’, and one of those choices is a day trip to the Dolfinarium, a spokesperson confirms. “We will reconsider our offer for next year.”
They have also heard about the action of World Animal Protection at the Dolfinarium. “The Dolfinarium is against this action”, Alexander Tiebot told RTL Nieuws by email. He is the park manager of the mammal park. “We will not go into the content of the action itself.”
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Al Abbar thinks that the basins, no matter how much time, money and manpower are invested in them, can never compete with the real sea. Take the walls of such a basin, for example: the bouncing sounds that the dolphins make. From their heads, the mammals make high-pitched beeps underwater, which in the wild reverberate against food, for example. That way they can hunt, but also find their way or use it to ‘socialize and communicate’.
“That is also not really possible in a basin: the sound that a dolphin makes in captivity always bounces back. And dolphins can dive up to 200 meters deep: that is not possible in a basin either.”
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