Ocean Sentry
A leading tour operator in Europe canceled daily trips to two aqua parks in Turkey citing poor physical conditions, which sparked debate involving animals in captivity.
Harald Zeiss, head of Quality and Environment at TUI Deutschland, told the Doğan news agency last week that Dolphinland in Antalya and Troy Aqua & Dolphinarium, located in the Rixos Premium Hotel in Belek, were taken out of the company”s tour programs due to findings of a recent auditing.
“In the audit, our inspectors discovered the size of the pools; the noise level during the shows; the approach to the animals and the cleanliness of the structures were below our standards,” said Zeiss. “Hence, trips to these centers will not be offered to our customers, affective immediately.”
According to the information on the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society’s, or WDCS, Web site, the worldwide captivity industry threatens wild whale and dolphin populations. “Confined in an unnatural environment, these wide-ranging, social animals are forced to live a life of severe deprivation, suffering lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than in the wild,” says WDCS.
The vast majority of the bottlenose dolphins and beluga whales held in Turkey were captured from the wild, according to a paper by Özgür Keşaplı Didrickson of the Underwater Research Society Marine Mammals Research Group, or SAD-DEMAG;
In 2006, the Turkish Agriculture and Rural Affairs Ministry revoked a ban on the capture of bottlenose dolphins and gave permission to capture 30 dolphins in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Then in November 2007, Turkey confirmed that 23 bottlenose dolphins were captured.
The Black Sea population of dolphins is classified as “endangered” and the Mediterranean subpopulation is classified as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s, or IUCN, Red List of Threatened Species.
Furthermore, in 2008, 12 bottlenose dolphins were imported into Turkey from the Japanese “drive hunts.” … Read Full Article
