The world is a dark place for captive whales and dolphins
Whales and dolphins are intelligent, conscious, self-aware, emotional, social, highly mobile beings. Captivity robs them of what it truly means to be a whale or a dolphin. Being confined and denied social contact with individuals they want to associate with has a serious impact on their mental wellbeing. Like us, their mental health suffers when their choices are removed.
Yet whales and dolphins are still captured from the wild, kept in tanks that are far too small to accommodate their needs, and exhibited for our entertainment. Many are forced to perform in shows or interact with humans in ‘bucket list’ activities like swim-with-dolphins experiences.
As the largest travel company in the world, TUI can help make this generation of captive whales and dolphins the last.
Please show your support by signing our letter to TUI:
You've helped us achieve big wins
Holiday companies fuel this whale and dolphin mental health crisis by promoting these ‘attractions’ to their customers. We’ve been campaigning successfully to persuade all UK tour operators to stop perpetuating the cruelty of captivity.
Our campaign is working. We've already persuaded Virgin Holidays, British Airways, Thomas Cook, TripAdvisor and Booking.com to stop selling tickets to captive whale and dolphin 'attractions' and Expedia followed last year. Let’s help the rest of the UK travel industry to shake off the past and build a kinder, more sustainable future for tourism.
Worldwide, around 3,600 whales, dolphins and porpoises are held in captivity. This includes more than 3,000 dolphins, around 360 belugas, and around 57 orcas. Many of these individuals have families in the wild while others have been bred in captivity and have never even seen the sea.
Let's meet some of them
Find out more about our campaign
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The dark side of captivity
Just like us, captive whales and dolphins suffer serious emotional and psychological damage when they are denied their liberty. When they are removed from their family and friends, taking away all their choice, what makes them fundamentally who they are is gone.
Many of the qualities that make us human also apply to whales and dolphins. Without outside interference, we have both evolved to live rich, long, emotionally complex lives where tight family and friendship bonds are formed and much time is invested in raising young. We share similar personality traits such as curiosity, empathy and sociability and so it should be easy for us to understand that when the conditions to thrive and flourish are removed, mental health suffers.
Depressed:
Like humans, the trauma of incarceration manifests itself in many ways: self-harm, psychosis, depression and aggression. It affects a whale or dolphin’s personality and their behaviour towards other individuals, including their offspring and often the humans training them.
Boredom is the most widespread condition and a serious concern because, as predators, they are denied one of the most important behaviours of their natural repertoire, the ability to hunt and forage. For captive whales and dolphins, the boredom can be relentless.
Drugged:
When a captive individual shows signs of anxiety, stress or neurotic, repetitive behaviours (known as stereotypies), marine parks turn to pharmaceuticals to ‘manage’ that individual. The facilities claim the medication helps maintain mental health in captivity. Psychoactive (or psychotropic) drugs such as Valium and Xanax are administered for the reasons mentioned and also to calm a dolphin during clinical procedures or when preparing an individual for transport between facilities and his/her integration into a new tank. One of the more bizarre applications is its use to stimulate appetite for depressed or sick individuals even though there is no evidence that dolphins can taste anything other than salt.
Dolphins are voluntary breathers - they must be awake to breathe, so perhaps the most alarming side-effect of Valium is that it has been shown to decrease the responsiveness of the respiratory system.
Surely the very fact that psychoactive drugs need to be administered as part of a captive dolphin’s ‘tank management plan’ contradicts any industry claim that ‘their’ dolphins are thriving in a barren, concrete environment and implicitly confirms that medication for mental health issues across various facilities, species and settings is, in fact, widespread.
Desperate:
Sometimes captive whales and dolphins just shut down completely, especially those in solitary confinement. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, the constraints of an artificial physical and social environment severely compromise the mental health of such large-brained, intelligent, sentient, sapient, emotional beings, whether they were born in captivity or stolen from the ocean.
The solution:
We're calling on the travel and captivity industries to commit to our phase-out model:
- No performances
- No breeding
- No wild captures
- No trade between facilities
- Enhanced welfare conditions
- Support for sanctuaries
It is relatively easy to scoop a wild whale or dolphin out of the ocean and condemn them to a life in captivity, but it is much harder to return them to the wild. Sadly, as much as we would like to see it happen, change in the industry won’t happen overnight. There are more than 3,600 captive whales and dolphins in the world today, most of whom have only ever known life in a tank. It would be irresponsible (and would undoubtedly negatively affect their mental health) to release many of them to the wild. The numerous reasons for this include the loss of their ability to hunt and feed themselves, and their reliance on their trainers for veterinary care to treat the health conditions that years of confinement have caused.
The answer is to make sure that this generation of captive whales and dolphins is the last, and create sanctuaries where those currently held can be retired and, in some cases, rehabilitated for a return to the wild.
The story so far...
September 2022
We launch The Dark Side Of Captivity, a major new campaign uncovering the devastating impact that confinement has on the mental health of whales and dolphins and encouraging TUI to become mental health champions by supporting a phase-out of captivity.
April 2022
We hand over our petition to senior TUI staff and discuss TUI's support for cruel whale and dolphin captivity. TUI tell us that they are reviewing their animal welfare policy and have already stopped business with several captive dolphin attractions.
2021
2012-2021
2020
French law to phase out whale and dolphin captivity is proposed for discussion in parliament in 2021.
2020
Canada outlaws holding whales and dolphins in captivity.
2019
2019
2018
Thomas Cook announces it is dropping all captive orca attractions.
2017
Thomas Cook announces it is dropping some dolphin attractions from its books.
2017
Virgin announces they won't take on any new attractions that feature captive whales and dolphins for theatrical shows, contact sessions (such as swim-with-the-dolphins experiences) or other entertainment purposes.
2015
2014
2014
Days after we launch our campaign, Virgin announces it will no longer work with facilities who buy whales and dolphins captured from the wild and invites others in the tourism industry to sign up to this pledge too.
2014
2013
2013
1993
The UK’s last captive attraction closes its doors after a government review, in part triggered by our 1987 report, calls for minimum standards covering factors such as pool size, feeding, water quality and handling which proved financially unviable for facilities.
1987
WDCS (as we were), together with Born Free, exposes the terrible conditions whales and dolphins, like Winnie the orca at Windsor Safari Park (pictured), are kept in at attractions in the UK.
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