Fake Rocks, Palm Trees and Captive Dolphins

The dolphin theater at Loro Parque in Tenerife, Spain, seats 1,800 spectators. It is typically packed with holidaymakers who want to see dolphins perform high-energy acrobatics while upbeat music creates a party-like atmosphere. The crowd cheers as two dolphins propel a trainer through the water by pressing their rostrums against her feet. Their applause grows even louder when the dolphins give another trainer a speedy ride through the water while he holds on to their dorsal fins with his hands and steps on the lower backs of each dolphin. He is basically using the dolphins as ride-on toys, and grins widely as he rides the dolphins for the entire length of the pool.

Fast-paced acts where dolphins must use their strength to pull or push their trainers through the water yield the loudest applause, but it seems like Loro Parque has decided it would give a better impression if they toned the theatrical content down a notch and introduced segments that can be labelled as educational. During one of the “educational” stunts, a dolphin must remain completely still on the platform while a trainer places orange suction cups over its eyes. Then the trainer throws an object into the pool, and the “blindfolded” dolphin must find the object and bring it back to the trainer. This is to illustrate that dolphins can “see” with sound, and the dolphin receives a fish as a reward for its cooperation.

Using dolphins as live surfboards or ride-on toys are among the most popular stunts at dolphinariums worldwide. Hundreds of holiday makers applaud wildly as one of the trainers at Loro Parque in Tenerife takes a speedy ride through the water while the loud music is blasting through invisible speakers at the dolphin stadium. And this, according to the captive dolphin industry, teaches the public respect for nature. Credit: Helene O’Barry/Dolphin Project

On the surface, the captive dolphin spectacle at Loro Parque looks like harmless family entertainment. The sun is shining, and the water in the tank is invitingly blue. Upbeat music plays. And energetic trainers, with their perpetual plastered-on smiles, put the dolphins through their repertoire of trained behaviours. The dolphins, too, appear to be smiling, but that is due only to the structure of their jaw line. Loro Parque has installed fake rocks around the show tank to make it look somewhat natural, but the human-made decorations make no difference whatsoever to the dolphins. Nothing in these barren confinements resembles the ocean world they naturally belong to, and there is no way for them to express their natural abilities, such as foraging, navigating, and exploring. Credit: Helene O’Barry/Dolphin Project

Among the other tricks the dolphins must do are jumping over a pole, spinning around on the platform, and standing upside down in the water while waving at the audience with their tail flukes.

Loro Parque has installed artificial rocks all around the show pool, which is even equipped with a small waterfall and several water features. Combined with the palm trees, hibiscus plants, and other subtropical vegetation that grows here, the rocks and water features create the illusion that the dolphins’ living space is part of the natural world. It is as if Loro Parque is trying to make spectators believe that the tank is a not really a tank—it’s a lagoon! But while the scenery is appealing to the human eye, it makes no difference to the dolphins. Surrounded by barren walls day in and day out, they remain trapped in a lifeless concrete container that holds no resemblance at all to the ocean world they naturally belong to.

Throughout the show, Loro Parque displays various messages on the stage backdrop, such as, “Dolphins have large tail flukes that propel them through the water,” and “Dolphins are able to swim at speeds of over 28 kilometers an hour.” Apparently, Loro Parque fails to see how ironic it is to inform spectators about the awe-inspiring natural abilities of dolphins while they prevent their own dolphins from putting these same talents and powers to any meaningful use in the minuscule and desolate tank they are in.

The screen also at some point reads: “Sadly, the oceans are in trouble.” Then it lists some of the threats that dolphins face in nature, such as plastic pollution, chemicals, and heavy boat traffic. Loro Parque forgets to mention the threat that they themselves have contributed to, and that is the violent captures where young calves are wrestled from their mothers and hauled ashore, never to see their families or the open ocean again.

The website Ceta-Base is a comprehensive source of information for anyone who wants to know where some of the world’s captive dolphins came from. Paco, for example, was captured off the coast of Florida, USA, in February 1984. The capture team took him to Dolphin Research Center, which is a captive dolphin swim program located on Grassy Key. In December 1986, a team of handlers trucked Paco to Miami International Airport and loaded him aboard an airplane that flew him about 3,800 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to Tenerife. Paco continues to perform in shows at Loro Parque more than 38 years after he last saw the ocean.

Captive dolphins are well aware that humans are their only source of food. And their hunger is precisely what drives dolphin shows all over the world. Without it, and without the dolphins’ powerless predicament created by depriving them of the ability to forage on their own like they would in nature, it would not be possible to train them to sing, dance, and jump on command. The dolphin trainers who hold the buckets of fish hold tremendous power over the dolphins, as seen here during a dolphin show at Loro Parque in Tenerife, Spain. Credit: Helene O’Barry/Dolphin Project

When the music stops and the show is over, spectators leave the theater and move on to their next holiday adventure, oblivious to the display of human dominance they have just witnessed and applauded. The dolphins, of course, are stuck here and never get to leave. They can’t ever go home. Their journey stagnates right here, within the barren walls of lifeless, barren concrete tanks. By human design and intervention, they will spend the remainder of their lives far away from their natural homes, with little to do and nowhere to swim to. Credit: Helene O’Barry/Dolphin Project

Pacina was captured in Florida in November 1986 and trucked to Dolphin Research Center where she spent seven months before arriving at Loro Parque in June 1987. Pacina, too, is still performing at Loro Parque.

Baron and Crystal, who were netted in Florida in February 1984 and warehoused at Dolphin Research Center for almost three years, were flown to Tenerife in December 1986. Baron and Crystal are no longer alive. Another Florida dolphin, known as Ruffles, was yanked out of the ocean in 1986 and held at Dolphin Research Center until June 1987 when she was sent to Loro Parque. She died in September 2021. Sanibel was taken from her pod off the coast of Florida in September 1986 and stored at Dolphin Research Center until June 1987 when she was flown to Tenerife. She died at Loro Parque in July 2017 after fulfilling her role as an entertainer for 30 years.

As far as I can tell, seven dolphins were born at Loro Parque through the years, and the dolphins that perform at Loro Parque as of May 2023, eight in all, are:

• Paco, a male, captured in Florida in February 1984
• Pacina, a female, captured in Florida in November 1986
• Luna, a female, born at Loro Parque in October 1997
• Clara, a female, born at Loro Parque in December 1999
• Ilse, a female, born at Loro Parque in November 2011
• Ebu, a male, born at Loro Parque in November 2020
• Achille, a male, born at Acquario di Genova, Italy in August 2002 and arriving at Loro Parque in November 2015
• Ulisse, a male, born at Aquatic World Cattolica, Italy in September 1997 and arriving at Loro Parque in November 2015

Note: The description of the show is based on visits to Loro Parque in December 2021 and January 2022. Images were taken in 2015, 2021, and 2022.

Featured image: Dolphins look happy no matter how they feel inside. The dolphin smile enables dolphinariums to put them through a wide variety of suffering without spectators ever noticing that something is wrong. Trainers are experts at making the dolphins’ abnormal behaviors look like a voluntary display of fun and games, and few people stop and ask how the dolphins feel about being trapped for life in a concrete show stadium. Credit: Helene O’Barry/Dolphin Project

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

TUI, which calls itself the world’s largest tourism business, supports the capture, confinement, and commercial exploitation of dolphins by advertising and selling tickets to dolphin shows at various dolphinariums around the world, including Loro Parque.
SIGN THE PETITION: Ask TUI to Stop Selling Tickets to Captive Dolphin Shows

LEARN MORE: Travel sites profiting from captive facilities 

REFERENCES:

Ceta-Base history of Loro Parque’s dolphins