19 min read The Disturbing Truth Behind Your Swim With The Dolphins If you love dolphins, don't swim with them. Here's why.

Throngs of Americans are heading south to the Caribbean right now, for the balmy sunshine, intoxicating evening breeze, turquoise waters ... and the opportunity to swim with dolphins. But despite their popularity, swim-with-the-dolphin programs have a dark underbelly, and those on the inside are starting to speak out against them.

Courtney Vail/WDC

Courtney Vail/WDC

Swim-with-the-dolphin (SWTD) programs can be found all over the world, but they've become exceptionally popular in the Caribbean in the past decade or so. A former dolphin trainer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Dodo that these programs are inherently problematic - and cetaceans simply do not belong in captivity. "Dolphins are beautiful and amazing creatures in their natural habitat," says the former trainer, who requested anonymity because he still works in the Caribbean hotel industry. "But stick them in a cage, and you watch them change." One trainer's story Born and raised in the Bahamas, the trainer says he was employed at two swim-with-the-dolphin facilities in the Caribbean, and his concerns grew over his tenure. The dolphins' holding pens were not only excessively shallow, but also far too small. At one facility, he says, more than 40 dolphins were caged in three compact cells. In the open sea pens - as opposed to enclosed pools within a resort - debris like nails and fish hooks would float in from the ocean, he adds. "Because they didn't have a vet or any type of veterinary care at [this particular] facility, the dolphins would swallow things, and there would be nothing you could do about it," he says. Though he witnessed the enclosed pens being cleaned, he claims the smell of the chlorine was so strong, it would "choke" the trainers - and that some of the animals eventually went blind because of its use. He also maintains that many of the dolphins suffered from "psychosis," a behavior not unheard of in marine mammals forced to swim in small pens all day long. They were also under extreme pressure to perform, which may have made them dangerous to humans, he says: "They did 10 interactions a day ... the same motions, the same speech, the same signals over and over. They would get frustrated ... and aggressive to guests or knock food buckets out of our hands."

Courtney Vail/WDC

Courtney Vail/WDC

The former trainer's most troubling allegation, however, is that some female dolphins prevented their new babies from breathing - by stopping them from coming to the surface. The trainer, who isn't a scientist, said he and his colleagues deduced the mothers did this because they didn't want their babies to "live in captivity." Though that allegation can't be proven, another former trainer has echoed other worries. Moreover, studies have pointed to some issues with dolphin captivity in general. According to a World Animal Protection/Humane Society of the United States report called "The Case Against Marine Mammals in Captivity," cetaceans in captivity are routinely given antibiotics and ulcer medications, are in need of vitamin supplements because they are being fed nutrient-deficient frozen fish and have a history of premature death from a variety of causes. The report also notes that, for many dolphins, enclosure sizes are less than 1 percent of their natural habitat range.

What's wrong about swimming with dolphins? "Swim with the dolphins" (SWTD) is a general term for a variety of dolphin-themed itineraries. Besides swimming with a dolphin (or two), you can be photographed with a dolphin, pulled through the water by a dolphin (the "dorsal tow"), smooched by a dolphin or pushed by the beak of a dolphin. You can even pay to be a dolphin "trainer," complete with a whistle and training manual. There are some 30 dolphinariums in the Caribbean, says Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI). They can be found at a number of tourist meccas, including the Bahamas, Jamaica, Tortola, Grand Cayman, the Dominican Republic and Cancun. Even more facilities are being built in the region, including one that recently opened in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, and others are being proposed in Turks and Caicos and St. Lucia, says Courtney Vail, the campaigns and program manager at Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), who has been campaigning against cetacean captivity for 16 years. The WDC documented many welfare incidents in the Caribbean in a 2010 paper called "Captivity in the Caribbean." In one facility in Antigua, dolphins were found to be "unusually dark" due to shallow enclosures and subsequent sunburn; some were found to be held in isolation for training purposes; and some were exposed to polluted water.

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