Bahrain dolphin park concerns

The Marine Connection have serious concerns about a lone beluga whale, two dolphins and a sea lion reportedly being kept in poor conditions in a captive facility in Bahrain.

It has been suggested that the animals are living in unacceptably small indoor pools which are extremely detrimental for the health of these animals adapted to travelling many miles a day. In addition, dolphins, beluga whales and sea lions all dive to tremendous depths which could not possibly be catered for in these pens.

There is one lone beluga whale at the park and, in addition to beluga whales not faring well in captivity generally due to their unique adaptations to the freezing conditions of the Arctic regions, they are animals which live in groups called pods and to keep this whale on its own puts additional and damaging stress on the animal.

Small pens and poor conditions often lead these ordinarily sociable animals to become aggressive, potentially bite and inflict serious injuries with head thrusts and fluke whacks. This psychological scarring of these animals puts any human participants at great risk when swimming with the animals. In fact, it was said that people in the park were no longer allowed to swim with the dolphins because of this very reason. However, people are still allowed to swim with the solitary beluga whale.

Three dolphins were imported from Russia in 1998 to the Bahrain Dolphin Park, however, within weeks of their arrival two of the dolphins died.  The remaining dolphin was then joined in 1999 by two further dolphins from Russia.  Considering there are now only two left, this begs the question, where did the third dolphin go?  This Park has a very poor reputation and who is to say how many beluga whales, dolphins and sea lions have died within the facility? 

Marine Connection wrote to the Gulf Daily News in Bahrain; see the published article of 15 July 2006 here.

The charity is currently working hard to establish more information about the situation in Bahrain and will update this website in due course with any further news and action alerts.