El Acuario

El Acuario
You couldn't pay me to go to Sea World. This attraction that offers performing dolphins and whales is iconic among animal rights folks as a place to hate. And why not? They capture sea mammals and teach them to do tricks for the paying customers. Once made into a Sea World performer, a dolphin or whale will never know free swimming again and will always be constrained to circle endlessly in what amounts to large swimming pools. And, after a few weeks or months of this captivity, these animals lose their ability to hunt for food. That is the final insult. Even if we freed them all, they'd die in the wild.
But we decided to visit El Acuario in Miramar near Havana--more to understand what it is than to patronize exploitation. El Acuario is right next to the sea, and, during recent hurricanes, storm surges had invaded the property, damaged some buildings and caused the escape of some performing dolphins, probably followed by their starving to death. Restorations of the buildings were underway, but moving slowly--it had been years since the hurricanes. We wandered the grounds waiting for show time, and we stared at the non-performing captives--turtles, sea birds, and other small animals.
When it came time to be seated for the show, we had our choice of seats, and we moved to the center of a circular bleacher structure, about half way up to the top. There, before us, was a large, oval shaped pool with gates controlling access to two smaller pools, one on either side of the main pool. Large, flat stage areas were in front of and behind the large pool where the trainers did their work. There were two male and two female trainers and plenty of buckets of fish used by the trainers as rewards for tricks well done.
I commented to Nora that the dolphins seemed happy, and she wisely told me not to confuse the calmness that comes with resignation with contentment. Mulling that over, I thought how sad not to be able to swim in a straight line for more than a few yards. And how sad to be fed from a bucket instead of hunting and chasing your dinner. How defeated a new performer must be when he senses he'll never again explore a new part of the sea.
The show was professional and entertaining, the long days of training to get them to do their tricks was evident if you thought about it. But in El Acuario as well as in Sea World the show is designed to keep you from thinking about the captivity, the resignation, or their loss of freedom.
Thankfully El Acuario has no orcas or killer whales. It's quite enough to think about these exploited dolphins, prisoners of animal exploitation. As the show ended, we were invited to a small group that gathered on one of the stages to pet two dolphins who beached themselves so we could pet them. I wondered what they thought of us as we petted them, and even talked to them.
Les Inglis