Marine Connection

Dolphin Reef, Eilat situated in the Red Sea is a captive dolphin facility which claims to offer something unique. It claims to be an 'ecological site' where people can 'observe dolphins in their natural habitat' and where the dolphins choose to be with people. Sadly, this facility is far from unique. There are many facilities like Dolphin Reef around the world claiming to be unique but each facility has the same fundamental basics - the confinement of several dolphins in a small area totally detached from their natural environment, even if a pen in the sea, where tourists can observe and swim with them. One crucial similarity of all of these facilities, and the one which drives them, is revenue.

A sea pen is still a captive facility. A dolphin which would normally travel hundreds of miles throughout oceans and dive hundreds of feet is, at Dolphin Reef, contained in a shallow bay a tiny fraction of the size of the usual area it would have to explore and hunt. Dolphin Reef is not an 'ecological site', it is in no way a dolphin's 'natural habitat'; it is, plain and simple, a captive dolphin facility. A dolphin's 'natural habitat' extends throughout whole oceans, to the sea bed with live fish to hunt and an endless, diverse environment to explore using their echolocation skills. To call this an 'ecological site' is a contradiction. The dolphins at Dolphin Reef are not native to the Red Sea, bottlenose dolphins are not endangered, and in fact, the waste eleven dolphins will create in a confined space such as Dolphin Reef, where currents are restricted and waste simply falls to the ground, is likely to devastate the sea bed.

Dolphin Reef's dolphins are penned in by nets. Yes, for six years a small 'door' was left in these nets. However, these dolphins are habituated - they receive food in the pen and no longer need to hunt - why would they not come back to their pen if they thought food was readily available there? Potentially the calves bred in the pen will not even know how to forage for themselves because there is no reason for its mother to teach it when they are so regularly and routinely fed by humans. This 'freedom' also endangered the dynamics of wild pods in the Red Sea where the different species' interacted and potentially mated indicating that the new calves within Dolphin Reef may be cross-bred.

The 'Open Sea Project' offered a false 'freedom of choice'. The dolphins were free to leave but for the six years previous had been manipulated and habituated into a routine of feeding and contact with humans - psychologically they had no choice. If the dolphins came back more aggressive and 'badly-behaved' it possibly indicated that some of their natural instincts were returning. This is how wild dolphins behave - with aggression, they have to fight to survive. The owners of Dolphin Reef would have seen the danger this heightened aggression posed to their visitors and again the revenue far outweighed the re-instatement of the dolphins' wild instincts. The risk of a dolphin hurting a visitor, especially one of the vulnerable 'Supportive Experience with the Aid of Dolphins' patients who might pay up to US$5000 per year, is too great to give the Dolphin Reef dolphins their independence back.

One of the major reasons the dolphins are kept in a sea pen is because it is more aesthetically pleasing to the public. Many people feel uncomfortable swimming with dolphins or whales in a tank, but in a sea pen they can imagine that the dolphins are free and have swum from the wide ocean just to see them. Unfortunately, a sea pen or a tank; they both confine the dolphin and inhibit its natural habits.

The Red Sea is seen as a haven for marine life so why pay extortionate prices to visit a contrived and exploitative facility such as Dolphin Reef when you can see native, wild, frolicking dolphins displaying their inherent unique and natural behaviours over miles of the Red Sea!! The truth is that humans do not need to touch dolphins to be touched by dolphins. It is possible to see a variety of different wild dolphins in the Red Sea including Spinner and Striped dolphins. Coincidentally, in May 2006 (as reported on Dolphin Reef's website) a pod of 100 wild and free (that is, truly free) dolphins were seen swimming near the facility.

The reality surrounding Dolphin Reef is totally removed from the story told by the facility. There are many wild dolphins in the Red Sea who live in their 'natural habitat' and protected in 'nature reserves', revelling in their freedom of the oceans but this certainly does not apply to those dolphins restricted to their pen at Dolphin Reef. Dolphin Reef does not exist as a nature reserve, educational tool, therapeutic centre, natural habitat for Black Sea dolphins or as a research centre; it continues as a tourist trap where captive dolphins (and tourists alike) are exploited for profit.