Bottlenose Dolphins Should Be Kept In Captivity Essay
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Bottlenose Dolphins are extremely intelligent marine mammals that have been kept in captivity for years, living very different lives to other members of the same species that live freely in the wild. For example, Dolphins in captivity are confined to the boundaries of their tank and are also regularly trained to perform for both tourism and the film industry whereas Dolphins in the wild have the whole ocean to explore and hardly any human interaction. In this essay, I am going to look at how being kept in captivity can effect Bottlenose Dolphins and also ask the question “is it right to keep these complex marine mammals in captivity?”
Many marine parks say that their main aim is to conserve species (Mayer, 1998, 3) however, research into the effects of keeping Bottlenose Dolphins in captivity needs to be carried out in order to find out if these conservation attempts actually help the species or just cause individuals unnecessary stress. This research is very important…show more content… The Dolphins kept in captivity are consequently away from these threats which is an advantage as… Another advantage of this is that tests can be carried out on the captive dolphins for example to see if they can learn to avoid oil spills and certain types of fishing nets (Mayer, 1998, 31-32) in order to gain information that will help conservation attempts for the wild Dolphins in the future. On the other hand, carrying out tests on these captive Bottlenose Dolphins may have disadvantages for the individuals being tested as subjecting them to threats faced in the wild could cause them stress or even indirectly harm them. This has been shown in past experiments where ‘pingers’ on nets caused Commerson’s dolphins to leap out of the water and show acts of aggression to each other in an attempt to avoid the nets (Anderson et al, 1998). So