Folks, I am begging you, if you come across an influencer who on the one hand promotes "ethical wildlife encounters" but then reposts "magical" videos like this.... please run in the opposite direction.
DO. NOT. HARASS WILDLIFE! This is not what ethical wildlife tourism looks like. Yes, they may come close to you and investigate, but that does not mean you can then go out of your way to touch them, let alone chase them and repeatedly try to grab them! And the really dumb thing is, when you say this to someone, most people are like "oh yeah, that makes sense" ....until you start talking about marine life like dolphins or sea turtles, and suddenly all brains fly out the window, because everyone wants to chase that magical ocean moment.
The men in this video are following and repeatedly diving down to grab at this dolphin, and instead of actually educating people on how to properly act in a situation where a dolphin does approach you, this influencer is all like "wow look at how cool this is!" Please also be aware that interacting with wild dolphins like this is illegal in places like the United States.
But digging through this profile, all their captions read like chatGPT wrote it, and there are at least 2 different AI videos they're pretending are real. Wow. So much education and conservation.
"Oh but if it really bothered the dolphin then it would just swim away."
1. that isn't necessarily true, and even if the dolphin was originally playing, these are wild animals and situations can easily escalate into aggression
2. this isn't just about whether or not the dolphin itself was bothered. This is also about not habituating these wild animals to humans, because doing so increases their risk of entanglement, disease and boat strikes. It can also disrupt their normal resting/foraging behaviors, and stress out mothers with calves. Just because you can't see it with your untrained eye does not mean the stress isn't happening.
Wild dolphins habituated to people have also become aggressive and isolated from their normal social groups. This is what happened to Izzy, a wild born dolphin who now resides at Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Experts repeatedly warned people to stop interacting with her, but noooooo that magical ocean encounter with the ocean's most magical animal was too much to resist. Her case is not unique either.
Influencers/tour companies who promote this kind of behavior are part of the problem. Internationally these programs are highly under regulated. Even in places where there are regulations, many tour boats just straight up ignore the rules, chase down and surround animals like dolphins, then plop divers right there in the middle of it all. It's also not uncommon to see coral reef damage as a direct result of these activities too, as boats will just drop their anchors directly onto reefs, and/or swimmers/divers with little experience in regulating their buoyancy will just stomp all over the coral.
The truly ironic thing is that many of these influencers will then get all sanctimonious about how bad aquariums are for keeping animals in captivity, regardless of whether or not the facility is accredited and follows best, evidence based welfare practices. Please note that when people promote these activities as some kind of "pure" or "ethical" alternative to captivity, they're blatantly using marketing ploys on you, not facts. If you personally don't want to support aquariums then fine, but harassing wild animals for the perfect photo op is still exploiting animals for entertainment.
And it's not just happening with dolphins. There are huge problems with swim with wild orca tours. See also this.
This also happens with tours that advertise swimming with whale sharks.
Tons of people crowding around one shark in shallow water just for that perfect encounter.
Not to mention the dozens of tour boats surrounding them
(sources for these screenshots here and here, respectively).
I also recently saw a video of a local guide in Hawaii (I think?) yelling at tourists for crowding around a sea turtle trying to rest on the beach. I can't find it now, but several of the tourists got stupid defensive about it too, as well as a lot of people in the comments which is just mind boggling to me.
Sigh. I don't really have a coherent conclusion this besides: just stop it. Don't do this stuff. Don't support influencers or tour companies who behave this way. Support wildlife tourism that respectfully observes from a safe distance.
