Excerpt from this EcoWatch story

By the end of June, it will be illegal to keep whales and dolphins in captivity in Canada, the Huffington Post reported Tuesday.

The so-called "Free Willy" bill passed the Canadian House of Commons by an overwhelming majority Monday, CBS News reported. It now must pass through a process called "royal assent" in which either the governor general or their deputies sign off on the bill. It will make it illegal to keep cetaceans in captivity, breed them or import or export the intelligent marine mammals. Anyone who violates the law could face a fine of up to $150,000.

"Today is a really good day for animals in Canada," Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who sponsored the bill in the House, said after it passed, according to the Huffington Post.

The Mirage welcomes new dolphin calf

A new dolphin calf is making a splash with at The Mirage.

The resort welcomed the female calf who was born on July 17. Her mother is Huf n Puf, who was born at Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat in March 2002.

The resort said the calf and mother are doing well. After delivery, the calf swam unassisted to the water's surface to take her first breath.

“Everyone at The Mirage is thrilled about the new calf and how well she is doing,” said David Blasko, Director of Animal Care at The Mirage.

The new calf, which will soon be named, is nursing well and bonding with her mother as she follows her around the habitat

Huf n Puf and her new calf are in the birthing and research pool, which is open to the public during operating hours.

Fake Smiles

Written by: Rosie Camden

Dawn Brancheau, a killer whale trainer at the SeaWorld facitlity in Orlando, Florida, was killed during a show by a killer whale, or orca, named Tilikum. Tilikum is a 12,000 lb. male orca that has performed shows at SeaWorld for years (Should Orcas Be Kept In Captivity?.). It’s safe to say that the majority of people have seen a dolphin at some point in their lives, whether it was in a tank on display or jumping and performing tricks in a choreographed show with its trainers. Take a minute to think, how the dolphins got there, from the ocean, in the first place. 2,000 dolphins and porpoises from seven different species are hunted every year between the months of September and March.

Dolphins have been around since the dinosaurs and were worshipped by the Greeks. It was considered a horrific crime to kill a dolphin. It was a crime worse than killing a human. Where did the respect that we had for them back then go? Dolphins are too intelligent and social to be hunted or kept in captivity. They are self-aware and have an intricate language. Dolphins problem-solve and cooperate with one another to survive.

The little and once nonexistent to us, fishing town of Taiji, has a tradition for the local fishermen to hunt dolphins every year (Powell). The fishermen are permitted to hunt an annual amount of 2,000 dolphins and porpoises from seven different species and the practice lasts from September through March every year (Hume). They government gives the fishermen permission to hunt and capture dolphins to sell their meat for profit. Most of the dolphins are killed for their meat but others are captured and sent to aquariums. They use a technique called drive hunting in which they use large metal poles to make loud sounds that ring throughout the water to deafen and disorient the pod. The dolphins swim away from the boats and toward the cove where they are trapped in with nets. Once trapped the fishermen separate the pretty female dolphins without scars and send them to aquariums and the rest are killed using long metal rods to sever their spinal cords and then they either drown in their own blood or bleed out (Hume).

 Activists harassed the fishermen by cutting nets, breaking harpoons, and hitting the fishermen. The villagers and the fishermen are claiming that we have violated their privacy. It is understandable why both sides are angry because they both have very different viewpoints on the matter (Powell). Every year at the end of April, the villagers of Taiji gather around a monument they built to a whale. They then say prayers for the souls of the dolphins and whales and in thanks to them for providing them with food (Powell). Locals call the hunting of dolphins in Taiji traditional hunting practices. It was considered tradition to hunt them, not capture them, separate them from their families, and ship them across the continent to be put into tiny tanks to perform clown tricks (Hume). The experience is traumatizing and painful for the dolphins. They should not be hunted or kept in captivity because of their social bonds with one another and their reliance on one another. 

“Dolphins don’t stress over the fish snack that got away. They don’t wonder if a prowling shark will attack them on the other side of the reef. Or do they?” (Newman). Psychology professor at the University of Cambridge in England, Nicky Clayton, says, “ Until now, many scientists thought animals only lived in the present” (Newman).  

Dr. Stan Kuczaj, a dolphin researcher, conducted an experiment in Vallejo, California at the Six Flags facility where he dropped a gelatin ball into the top of a PVC pipe maze. The dolphin would then have to solve the maze by trying to get the ball to fall out the bottom of the PVC pipe and eat it. It only took the dolphin seconds to go through the maze and receive the gelatin ball (Dolphins: Even Smarter Than You Thought - Nat Geo Live). This experiment proves that dolphins are intelligent because the dolphin thinks and decides the most efficient way to receive the gelatin ball, while other animals will not know how to get to it and jab at the maze to attempt to get the gelatin. Dolphins are highly intelligent animals and need to exercise this intelligence, which they are unable to do in the confines of a tank. Dolphins have brains ranging from larger than that of a human’s to extremely close to ours in size (Dolphins: Even Smarter Than You Thought - Nat Geo Live). The size of a brain correlates to the intelligence of an animal, but size is not everything. A brain is useless unless you fill it with information and use it to learn, which is something that dolphins excel at in the wild.

Dolphins are self-aware and use this to their advantage. Diana Reiss, a psychobiologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Osborn Laboratories for Marine Science at the New York Aquarium, conducted an experiment with bottlenose dolphins. She selected a few dolphins and made nonpermanent marks on their bodies that the dolphins could only see by using a mirror. The dolphins that weren’t marked ignored the mirror but Reiss says “marked dolphins made a bee-line to it to see where they'd been marked," The dolphins used the mirror to look at the markings made on them by the researchers (Tennesen). Dolphins are capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors, which means that they are self-aware. Very few animals practice this rare ability, humans being one of them. Self-awareness gives dolphins a hunting advantage by allowing them to distinguish themselves from the prey. They can acknowledge their size, speed, and body parts and use them to their advantage and predict how the prey will react to them and be a step ahead of them (Tennesen).

 Dolphins are almost always vocalizing. What could a dolphin be saying when it cheerfully chirps in the direction of its comrades? Is it saying, ”Hey let’s play a game of tag!” or “Stop! Don’t do that.” Starting from birth, dolphins speak using squawks, whistles, clicks, and squeaks (Boyer). “And just as you gesture and change facial expressions as you talk, dolphins communicate nonverbally through body postures, jaw claps, bubble blowing, and fin caresses” (Boyer). Dolphins have an elaborate and intricate way of communicating with one another, but what are they saying? The CHAT- Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry, invented by Denise Herzing, is an instrument used in decoding the language of dolphins through receiving and making dolphin vocalizations. When the CHAT machine picks up a familiar vocalization that had been programmed into it, the CHAT translates the vocalization into words that you can hear through the attached headset (Dolphins: Even Smarter Than You Thought - Nat Geo Live). Dolphins have an elaborate language that humans are still trying to decode.

Dolphins prove, the phrase, “there is strength in numbers,” to not only be true but to be a very effective survival method. They use their language for many things including problem solving. Dolphins communicate and cooperate with each other to solve problems. Dr. Kuczaj created another experiment with dolphins he worked with in Key Largo, Florida. He took a piece of PVC pipe and left it in the shape of a tube. He had two caps on either side of the pipe. One was glued on and the other was snugly placed on and each cap had a rope on top of it. He showed the two dolphins that there was fish in the PVC tube and gave it to them. In order to get the cap off, the dolphins not only had to problem solve but also communicate and work cooperatively with each other. They quickly discovered a solution. One of the dolphins held the pipe while the other dolphin pulled the cap off (Dolphins: Even Smarter Than You Thought - Nat Geo Live).

Dolphins are highly social animals and look to each other for support. Keiki, a bottlenose dolphin who demands more time with her friend Ola, the false killer whale, repeatedly jumps into her friend’s tank when the trainers aren’t watching, but the trainers have quite a difficult time separating them when showtime comes around. To keep Keiki from jumping into Ola’s tank, the trainers put a wide board on top of the fence to make the jump more difficult. The next day, they found the board floating in the water and Keiki in Ola’s tank. Most of the trainers were confused and shocked at what they saw. One trainer witnessed what had happened and said Ola, the bigger of the two, pushed the board down with his strength so Keiki was then able to make the jump into his tank (Newman).

Killer whales hold the spot for the largest members of the dolphin family and currently there are forty-two killer whales in captivity (Should Orcas Be Kept In Captivity?.). Watching the dolphin or killer whales perform circus tricks is not providing us with factual information about these creatures. They are doing what they are told to do to obtain fish; this provides no real knowledge on their natural behaviors, which is what we should be learning about. With that said, the only reason why we are keeping killer whales and other species of dolphins in captivity is for entertainment purposes (Blackfish. 2014. Film.).

Dolphins are held unfairly in captivity. They are brutally separated from their families and forced to do tricks in a bathtub to survive. Dolphins should have the right to remain in the wild. A captive dolphin’s lifespan is cut in half. This is because we cannot give the dolphin all that it needs to survive. Dolphins are together forever, from the moment of birth they are with their families and remain with their families for the rest of their lives. Don’t be fooled by their fake smiles.

Blackfish. 2014. Film.

Boyer, Crispin. "The Secret Language Of Dolphins." National Geographic Kids 371             (2007): 32. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.

"Dolphins: Even Smarter Than You Thought - Nat Geo Live." YouTube. YouTube,             16 Mar. 2015. Web. 16 Apr. 2015.

Hume, Tim, and Junko Ogura. "Dolphins Killed in Taiji's Controversial Hunting             Season - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 25 Sept. 2014. Web. 16             Apr. 2015.

Newman, Aline Alexander. "Mind Games." National Geographic Kids 401 (2010):             20. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.

Powell, Bill, et al. "#THERE WILL BE BLOOD. (Cover Story)." Newsweek Global             162.13 (2014):1. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.

"Should Orcas Be Kept In Captivity?." Scholastic Scope 58.17 (2010): 4.             MasterFILE Premier. Web. 14 May 2015.