The Legislative Assembly in Mexico City passed legislation banning the use of marine mammals in shows and therapies in the capital city; However, in the country there are still 30 dolphinariums that will continue to operate, including Dolphin Adventure in Puerto Vallarta, part of Vallarta Adventure’s tour company.
In a recent interview with El Universal, María Eugenia Rodríguez, a marine biologist from the University of Guadalajara, who studies the distribution of bottlenose dolphins in the Bahía de Banderas, between Jalisco and Nayarit, gave seven reasons not to visit a dolphinarium:
1. The bottlenose dolphins live in the family and are extremely territorial. When a member of your family is abducted, members staying in the ocean suffer in a manner similar to a human during the loss of a loved one.
2. Individuals living outside their habitat initiate a adaptation process that causes them stress, as they must remain in confined spaces. A dolphin can develop mental illness and as a result attack humans. Some die during the adaptation process.
3. In freedom, a dolphin can live up to 60 years; In captivity, their average life is reduced by half.
4. The dolphins in captivity are not happy as they work many hours on shows and training without a benefit to them, only for corporate profit of the companies who have enslaved them.
5. Modify their eating habits; In the ocean they hunt on their own, when they are taken into captivity they become dependent on their trainers. Most of the time they feed them under conditioning; That is, they get fed only when they comply with orders.
6. Some specimens are born and bred in captivity, but this does not mean that they adopt captivity as their natural habitat since their genetics are designed to swim daily for hundreds of miles and coexist with those of their species.
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7. According to María Eugenia Rodríguez, the dolphin therapies are a myth, since “people show improvement over some disease because they respond to a strong aquatic stimulus”. Actually what they are getting is a hydrotherapy; The body responds because it is in motion.
If you want to meet these amazing animals in Puerto Vallarta, Wildlife Connection is the only company in Mexico that allows tourists to interact with the dolphins in their natural habitat, out of cages, no shows, no food for work.
Through many local snorkeling tours you can get up close and personal with other marine life in their natural habitat, the only way to really see how sea life actually lives.
