According to a recent article in The San Francisco Chronicle, misguided animal “rights” groups have decided to protest those marine parks where tourists pay to swim with trained dolphins. But in doing so, the activists are destroying a complex ecosystem, one that they do not fully understand.
As the newspaper says, swimming with dolphins is “the newest tourist rage.” No doubt manipulated by years of animal activist groups harping on about how special dolphins are, you can’t blame vacationers for trying it out. Satisfied customers interviewed by the paper included a thirty-year old payroll manager and a thirty-two year old railway inspector and his wife.
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Earlier this year, we enthusiastically reported on one such park, Theater of the Sea, in Islamorada, Florida. This is a great place. Yet, according to the paper [speaking of parks in the Caribbean], activists “contend such water parks, no matter how idyllic looking, support a cruel and poorly regulated international trade in the captive animals.”
While splinter groups like Jamaica Environmental Trust and Humane Society of the United States are critical of the parks and are calling for a ban on the hotels and resorts that sponsor the dolphin swims, we believe that such actions threaten America’s delicate tourodiversity, one whose balance has already been rent asunder by the miscalculations of similar groups.
Tourists may be flocking to this sort of attraction is because other animal attractions have been slowly strangled by the activist octopus. The only option now for tourists are the Disney-somethings (who could well be funding the activists), where a man in an animal suit can dress as an astronaut or baseball player. But tourists aren’t fooled. They want to see real animals playing drums like the Beatles, or smoking a peace pipe and wearing a colorful Native American headdress.
And just like an animal ecosystem can be destroyed when its smallest member is
compromised, so too can the delicate tourism ecosystem. Just ask those in Florida.
While some complain about the Everglades being drained, no less damaging is
the draining of tourist attendance.
It started with the small animal attractions like the Chimp Farm in Tarpon Springs, where the fun was squeezed out of the attraction by activists demanding more and more, until the place closed. Not long thereafter, and not by coincidence, the human-themed attraction in Tarpon Springs, Spongeorama, started to get sick.
In Miami, Monkey Jungle and Parrot Jungle were targeted. Monkey Jungle, still alive, was eviscerated of its fun quotient. Parrot Jungle had to move to an island. Now, Weeki Wachee, with its human mermaids, is on the verge of extinction. Cypress Gardens and its human actors closed before it.
Florida's Marineland, where men once cleaned the teeth of dolphins with giant tooth brushes, has seen its audience head south. Its last thread of hope, sadly, may be its new dolphin swim program.
To the attacking activists, we humbly preach peace, and submit that they beware the law of unintended consequences.
