Dolphinariums: a chronicle of the relationship between an intelligent and an unreasonable race

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Dolphinarium performances as entertainment for children and their parents are often found in major cities and resorts. But what is the price of these minutes of childish joy and do we understand what dolphins really are?

Let's start this small review of the topic of dolphins and dolphinariums with good news, of which, unfortunately, there are very, very few:

India recognizes dolphins as individuals and banned dolphinariums

The Indian government has awarded dolphins the status of "non-human". Thus, India became the first country to recognize the unique intelligence and self-understanding of representatives of the order of aquatic mammals - cetaceans.

The decision was announced by the head of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of India, which also banned performances using captive dolphins - in dolphinariums, aquariums, aquariums, etc. Dolphins "should have their own special rights," according to the ministry.

A brief overview of the situation with dolphinariums on the example of Ukraine (in Russia the situation is similar)

All types of dolphins found on the territory of Ukraine, listed in the Red Book of Ukraine. In addition, dolphins are protected by the International Red Data Book, the Black Sea Red Data Book, and the Convention on the Conservation of Cetaceans. Their use and capture for commercial purposes is prohibited by the Law of Ukraine "On the Red Book of Ukraine". Catching dolphins in nature is prohibited by a special moratorium of the Ministry of Environmental Protection of Ukraine from 2008 to 2011. International trade in dolphins is regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The bottlenose dolphin is the only species of dolphins in the fauna of Ukraine, it can live in dolphinariums, it has an endemic subspecies in the Black and Azov Seas, the state of the population of which is not completely known. Dolphin numbers continue to decline as dolphins become entangled in poaching nets and often die from collisions with floating craft. In addition, changes in water salinity in the Sea of Azov also strongly affect the status of dolphin populations.

Keeping dolphins in dolphinariums, on the other hand, is in direct violation of Articles 7, 8 and 25 of the Law of Ukraine "On the Protection of Animals from Cruelty".

Content in water of significant amounts of chlorine and other antiseptic agents for disinfecting water causes significant skin damage and blindness in dolphins. Many dolphinariums, and especially newly created ones, were discovered not on the sea coast (Kiev, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Lvov, Donetsk), and therefore dolphins are kept in them not in sea water, but in an artificially diluted solution. Most of the dolphinariums built over the past 2 years were built in violation of the law, and some even arbitrarily, by seizing a land plot (NEMO dolphinariums in Kiev and Donetsk). None of the dolphinariums has a complete package of documents on the ownership of dolphins, their origin, veterinary and health certificates.

In nature, dolphins overcome up to 160 km.and dive to the depth up to 200 meters … No dolphinarium unable to providegive them that opportunity. And this is not to mention mobile dolphinariums and containers in which dolphins are transported. The bottom of the dolphinariums does not look like the seabed in texture, and the frozen fish that dolphins are fed with does not look like live fish in all respects. In addition, the sonar waves, due to which the dolphins navigate, are reflected from the flat walls of the dolphinarium, causing pain to the dolphins, as a result of which they practically do not communicate.

In nature, the bottlenose dolphin lives up to 25-30 years, in captivity, on average - 3-5 years, while in captivity they rarely breed. Dolphinariums are not at all centers of environmental education, since they contribute to the reduction of the number of marine mammals and accustom citizens to the idea that dolphins are inhabitants of dolphinariums, and not the sea.

A number of countries around the world, for example, part of the US states, Brazil, Costa Rica have banned dolphinariums as institutions that do not meet the vital needs of dolphins. In England, dolphinariums were closed due to public pressure. The construction of new dolphinariums is a humanitarian problem, since a person deliberately destroys the unique representatives of the fauna of Ukraine for the sake of money. Therefore, the solution to this problem should be based on the awareness of the masses of the importance of this problem.

It is difficult to object to the joy of children from communicating with a dolphin, although the very effectiveness of dolphin therapy is easily criticized. Suffice it to say that dolphin therapy is recommended for diseases (for example, cerebral palsy) that are incurable. Many medical professionals deny the effectiveness of dolphin therapy if the procedures take place outside sea water, where the dolphins feel comfortable. At the same time, dolphin therapy provides for the leading participation in the treatment of psychotherapists, who are generally absent in the staff of most dolphinariums.

As we have already noted, since 2008 there has been a three-year moratorium on dolphin fishing in Ukraine. Since 2003, according to the CITES (Washington Convention), Russia has a zero quota for the export of dolphins to other countries. Dolphins do not breed in captivity (with a few exceptions). So where do the animals in the dolphinariums come from, which have been "multiplying" in recent years like mushrooms throughout Ukraine?

We (authors of the site delfinariy.info - editor's note) in no way demand the immediate return of the dolphins currently kept in dolphinariums to the natural environment. This would lead to their probable death. Our goal is to achieve the state in which the dolphinariums will begin to stop working, given the lack of replenishment with new animals, and also subject to the seizure of those dolphins that are kept in dolphinariums without proper documents. This is exactly what should happen, subject to the observance of the current legislation of Ukraine and Article 6 of the Convention on the Protection of Wild Flora and Fauna and Natural Habitats in Europe (1979).

Extermination of the Black Sea dolphins

Relatively recently, the Black Sea resembled a dolphin fairy tale … What happened to see, for example, Countess Gorchakova in the 19th century: “… hundreds of dolphins frolicked under the rays of the dazzling sun; they jumped, circled, on the surface of blue waters, cut the waves with their black tails and, catching up with each other, lifted up whole fountains of golden streams."

During the Soviet years, dolphins were sentenced to death. Ruthless large-scale fishing began, millions of animals were destroyed, they were processed for livestock feed.

However, not in voracity, not in cheerfulness, not in strength and fast movement, the value of a dolphin, but in the great commercial value that is attached to it in the general system of our young, improving economy. Possessing a valuable fat "coat" almost an inch thick and weighing 8-16 kg under its slippery skin, like wet rubber, the dolphin grows more and more every year: it becomes a subject of lively fishing. Smelly, tough, but cheap and nutritious meat, deeply hidden under the fat cover of a dolphin, saved hundreds of coastal Crimean families from starvation during the difficult years of hunger and devastation.

But rarely does anyone know about all the valuable materials that give expensive products, which a dolphin can “shine” with if it is rationally treated as raw material: leather, it is produced and becomes similar to suede; from lard, in addition to technical and medical fats, you can get glycerin, stearin, olein, lubricating, lighting and nutritional oils, fats for soap making; meat and bone meal is made from bones, meat and garbage - an excellent fertilizer rich in phosphorus and nitrogen; from meat - sausages and canned food of good quality and taste, after processing they lose their hardness and unpleasant odor; in addition, with one hundred percent use of the dolphin as a raw material, strings, gelatin, ichthyol, etc. are produced

“If we take into account that a significant part of the items listed here are export goods, it becomes clear what importance the relevant organizations should pay to the rational use of dolphin raw material” (Sevrayon Fisheries Inspectorate Report for 1928).

However, so far it is not necessary to talk not only about one hundred percent processing of the dolphin, but also about the rational organization of its catch and the coverage of the inexhaustible supply of raw materials in the region of the Crimean and, in particular, the Balaklava coast.

Even now, in these places, artisanal methods of fighting dolphins with the help of guns predominate, consisting in the fact that a shooter from a boat or a motor vessel hits a dolphin at the moment it emerges from the water with a large shot, and when a mortally wounded animal begins to drown, a specialist sitting next to the shooter - the dive rushes into the water and supports the dolphin on the sea surface until the dolphiners arrive in time to pick up the killed carcass with a hook. However, the fact that with this method of catching 30-40% of the executed animals drown in the depths of the sea makes the fishing supervision classify the fight of dolphins with guns as a predatory way of catching and recommend catching them by Alomaniacs. "This event will provide an opportunity, firstly, to more easily collectivize this type of trade, and, secondly, to preserve the skin as much as possible."

In the fishing of dolphins by Alomania (a type of nets) usually several dozen people take part in the presence of 10-12 boats. A few kilometers from the location of the dolphin herd, the boats diverge and gradually begin to surround it with the ends of deployed nets. Noticing the coverage of approximately 3/4 of the circumference of the space occupied by dolphins, dolphiners free from the net begin to drive the dolphins into a ring with shots and stones, which closely closes after the flock, frightened by the unusual appearance of the net, the roar and noise. After several killed dolphins abundantly cover the surface of the water with their blood, the rest, in wild horror, begin to rush about helplessly in captivity with a plaintive squeak. Hunters take advantage of this moment of confusion in the herds and, seizing the dolphins with their bare hands, fill their motor boats with a mass of victims of a successful catch, sometimes reaching several hundred heads.

This method of catching, which inevitably leads to the socialization of the entire system of dolphin fishing, has hardly taken root in the Balaklava area. The only Alomanian appeared in this area only at the beginning of 1930 at the initiative of Azchergosrybtrest.

The use of dolphin raw materials is still in its infancy in the Sevastopol-Balaklava region. At the end of 1929, it was limited only to the production of medical and technical fat, but the beginning of 1930 marks an obvious turning point towards a wider setting of the dolphin-processing industry. The initiators of this case are the Soglasie cooperative fishing artel and Azchergosrybtrest.

In the Cossack Bay, Rybtrest has equipped a lettuce-heating plant for the production of medical and technical fat with a capacity of up to 3 tons of the first and 8 tons of the second with one shift per day, and the production of meat and bone meal is being established.

The cooperative fishing artel “Soglasie” has expanded its dolphin-processing production on a much wider scale. She is equipped with a small, but valuable in quality "fleet" consisting of 8 motor launches with a one-time carrying capacity of up to 60 tons and fixed a solid staff of hunters, mechanics and sailors in the amount of 40 people.

In 1928/29, she procured only 47.5 tons of dolphin raw materials, which for processing yielded 10.7 tons of medical fat, 18 tons of technical and 575 skins, which were transferred for further processing to the leather co-industrial production. Artels "Soglasie" owns 2 dolphin processing plants, which are not working at full capacity due to the lack of raw materials. In Sevastopol, she also organized a canning factory with a maximum one-shift productivity of up to 6,000 boxes of canned food per day. By the beginning of 1930, the artel covered 120 members with a fixed capital of 40 thousand rubles.

During 29/30, the artel expects to extract up to 1,000 tons of dolphin raw materials: fat, leather, bone, meat, etc. From this raw material it is planned to produce significant quantities of canned meat, honey. dolphinol fat, replacing imported fish oil, industrial fats and meat and bone fat.

The artel intends to prepare and transfer to industrial cooperation for the production of up to 15,000 pieces of dolphin skins and a significant amount of waste from fat processing for further use. There are wide paths for further development before the artel, but despite all the successes achieved, it must be stated that little has been done in the field of dolphin fishing and dolphin-processing production. The marked shifts mark only the beginning. There is not the slightest doubt that the time is not far off when, having passed from handicraft methods of processing dolphin raw materials to widely and rationally supplied factory ones, our country will be enriched with a significant amount of necessary and valuable economic resources. The many millions of unused Soviet rubles, now playing briskly outside the ship, in the form of flocks of dolphins, will find wide application for themselves in the general system of development of our Union.

From the book: "BALAKLAVA. PRODUCTION FORCES, RESORT, HISTORY"

D. S. SCHNEIDER, Crimean State Publishing House, 1930

This chaos has stopped, but dolphins still need our protection. They suffocate in the bottom nets placed on the flounder and die from diseases …

Parallel civilization

Dolphins are intelligent. New arguments in favor of this hypothesis were provided by recent studies by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania. For quite a long time, experts have studied the language of dolphins and received truly amazing results. As you know, sound signals arise in the nasal canal of dolphins at the moment air passes through it. It was possible to establish that animals use sixty basic signals and five levels of their combination. Dolphins are capable of creating a 1012 "dictionary"! Dolphins hardly use so many "words", but the volume of their active "vocabulary" is impressive - about 14 thousand signals! For comparison: the same number of words is the average human vocabulary. And in everyday life, people get by with 800-1000 words.

The dolphin signal, if translated into human language, is something like a hieroglyph, which means more than a single word. The fact that dolphins have a language that is more complex than that of humans is a real sensation.

Rare abilities

The nature sometimes asks amazing riddles. And one of these mysteries, no doubt, remains dolphins. Despite the fact that they often live in full view of humans, we know very little about them. But even the little that is known about these animals is startling. Dolphins have some truly amazing abilities. So amazing that the American John Lilly, who studied brain physiology at the University of Pennsylvania, called dolphins a "parallel civilization."

First of all, scientists are surprised by the volume and structure of the dolphin brain. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania placed the animal in the womb of a magnetic resonance imaging scanner and saw that the structure of the nervous system in dolphins is so perfect that sometimes it seems as if it is better developed than in humans. “The brain of the bottlenose dolphin,” says Professor Laela Sai, “weighs 1,700 grams, which is 350 grams more than that of an adult male.

In terms of its complexity, the dolphin's brain is by no means inferior to the human brain: there are even more folds, tubercles and convolutions in it. " The total number of nerve cells in dolphins is higher than in humans. Scientists used to think that the brain of a dolphin is so large because nerve cells are not as densely packed in it as in humans. However, we were convinced of the opposite: the brain in the cranium is located the same. True, outwardly, the dolphin's brain looks more like a sphere than the brain of homo sapiens, which is slightly flattened. Dolphins have associative areas of the cortex that are identical to those of humans. "This fact indirectly indicates that dolphins can be intelligent," - say experts in marine biology.

The parietal, or motor, lobe of the dolphin's brain exceeds in area the parietal and frontal lobes of humans taken together. Why has nature endowed these creatures so? What is this - the result of centuries of evolution or, perhaps, the "legacy" of intelligent ancestors?

Interestingly, the occipital visual lobes in dolphins are extremely large, but they do not rely much on sight. Then what are they for? As you know, dolphins "see" with their ears to a greater extent, emitting ultrasounds. An acoustic lens on the dolphin's head focuses ultrasound, directing it to various objects. Thanks to this, the dolphin "sees" with its ears. He "feels" the underwater object, determining its shape.

“The inhabitants of the deep sea have two organs of hearing: one is normal, the other is ultrasonic,” says researcher Mario Etty. - The external passage is sealed, which increases the ability of hearing in the water. Receptors of another organ are located on the sides of the lower jaw, they perceive the slightest sound vibrations. A dolphin hears with its lower jaw much better than we do with our ears. The hearing of dolphins and killer whales is 400-1000 times sharper than humans. Due to the many cavities in the blowhole (nasal valve), acoustic vibrations arise that propagate over huge distances in the water. For example, blue whales and sperm whales can hear the sounds made by their cousins thousands of kilometers away!

As already mentioned, dolphins masterfully master their speech apparatus. Blowing back and forth the same portion of air, they give rise to such a range of sounds that their variations and number far exceed the sounds made by humans. Moreover, each dolphin has an individual voice, its own tempo and timbre of speech, manner of expressing itself and the "handwriting" of thinking.

It is very curious that the organs of hearing and speech, working simultaneously, create an amazing richness of the sound palette. The capabilities of the mammalian brain are so high that it is able to analyze separately the spectra coming at a frequency of 3000 pulses per second! In this case, the time interval between pulses is only about 0.3 milliseconds! And therefore, for dolphins, human speech is a very slow process. They're talking at high speed. In addition, they know how to isolate in the speech of their fellows such details that people do not even suspect, since our ears cannot catch them.

But that's not all. Scientists have conducted a series of experiments proving that dolphins can exchange highly complex messages. Here is just one example. The dolphin was given a certain task, which had to be performed by his brother, who was in the next aviary. Through the wall of the enclosure, one dolphin "told" the other what to do. For example, take a red triangle and give it to a person. Both dolphins received a small fish as a reward. However, it was clear that they did not work for remuneration, they were carried away by the very process of creative experimentation. Researchers conducted thousands of experiments, assignments were constantly changing, and the dolphins never got it wrong. The only possible conclusion from this: dolphins perfectly understand everything that is happening and orient themselves in the world like people.

The biologists who conducted the experiments were surprised to notice that often the subjects themselves began to control the course of the experiment and its organizers - people … The energy of creative search was transferred to the dolphins, and they suggested the experimenters to complicate and modify the task, while the scientists unexpectedly noticed that they were becoming an experimental model for dolphins who tried to switch roles with them. So who studied whom?

An earthly spaceship crashes on the planet of the Apes, and the crew is captured. They are all seated in cages and begin to study. They point at a banana and a button, and with all their appearance they make it clear - press the button - you will get a banana!

Earthlings indignantly express their protest due to the fact that they consider themselves to be intelligent beings and such treatment humiliates their human dignity. Nobody rushes them, one day comes to replace another, earthlings are still shown the button and the banana.

When hunger began to severely torment people, someone was the first to satisfy hunger, pressed the required button and got his banana. When this happened, the monkey-researcher wrote in his observation log: "After prolonged training, the first simplest conditioned reflex was developed."

Joke

Dolphins' brains were able to "see" sounds

A group of neuroscientists at Emory University has pioneered tractography on preserved dolphin brains. Thanks to this, it was possible to establish that the auditory sensory pathways of dolphins have an unexpectedly complex structure and resemble the corresponding structures of the brains of bats. The work was published in the journal.

For the study, the scientists used the brains of two dolphins, abandoned and killed on a beach shallow in North Carolina: the spotted protodelphin () and the common dolphin (). Using the diffusion MRI method, scientists were able to trace all the important relationships in the dolphin's auditory sensory system.

It turned out that in dolphins the auditory nerve goes not only to the zones of the auditory cortex, which are responsible for all kinds of auditory sensations, but also to the primary zones of the visual cortex, where early processing of visual signals is performed. A number of branches also branch off to various subcortical nuclei.

Scientists believe that such complex and diverse connections in the auditory sensory system arose due to the fact that dolphins actively use echolocation, which probably allows them to create three-dimensional visual pictures of the world around them based on sound signals. This ability brings dolphins closer to bats.

… Modern science believes that dolphins communicate with each other using ultrasound. But this is fundamentally a misconception.

With the help of ultrasound, dolphins … navigate in the water, as they have very poor and limited vision. And they communicate with each other … telepathically.

Exactly telepathically, and not with the help of ultrasound, as scientists think. Therefore, it is clear what results can be achieved when studying the intelligence of dolphins by examining the ultrasounds they send!

Natalya A. was with Yuri in the dolphinarium, who, being in the water with dolphins, thought to mentally ask them for help. Immediately a dolphin swam up to her, or rather a female dolphin named Lada, as it turned out later.

She was the leader of this small dolphin flock of this dolphinarium.

When Natalya continued to send telepathic messages, Lada happily entered into telepathic contact, explaining how hard it was for them with their "trainers" who do not understand that they communicate telepathically and that they require them to perform stupid tricks, and they are forced to perform them, otherwise death by hunger awaits them.

Inevitably, you remember an anecdote and it becomes painfully insulting for the creatures who call themselves a reasonable man - Homo Sapiens, but act like unreasonable children.

On what basis do "scientists" believe that the behavior and life of all living beings on the planet should obey far-fetched notions that have never had a serious foundation?

But this is a special conversation, but for now, let's get back to telepathic contacts with dolphins.

Lada telepathically transmitted information about the life of dolphins in captivity, about why they live in captivity much less than in the wild. And the shortening of the life span is connected not so much with longing for will as with the loss of unity with the world's oceans.

The oceans have accumulated in themselves, over billions of years, a huge potential of vitality and, at will, dolphins are in constant contact with this ocean biofield, which helps them to optimally normalize their vital functions.

In addition, in the wild, a flock of dolphins creates a common psi-field and this also helps them in optimizing their life processes. It is also curious that the dolphins drive away and sometimes kill the attacking sharks with a powerful psi-strike. They also use their psi potential as a weapon of defense.

Lada reported a lot of such details from their everyday life that when Natalya began to ask the "trainer" these details, he was surprised to ask her how she knew that he hit Lada in her face (I just want to write on her face) for two days ago, or that four days ago he fed them rotten fish, and took the fresh one with him.

The poor "trainer" could not even imagine that "stupid" animals could communicate telepathically with a person and convey all these details.

But, let's leave the poor "trainer" alone with his doubts and return to the dolphins …

I was very sorry that I did not have the opportunity to go to the dolphinarium, and no one invited me, but after the dolphinarium, Yuri and Natalya arrived in Kiev, where he asked me to introduce him to a high-ranking person whom I myself had recently met.

This was on my first visit to Kiev in connection with the treatment of this man's daughter, who had multiple sclerosis. I introduced them to each other, and at the same time Natalya told me about her contact with Lada.

I immediately offered to establish telepathic contact with her at a distance and also "got acquainted" with Lada. All this may seem strange, and for many it may seem incredible. But very soon, after a few months, a situation arose that confirmed the reality of telepathic contact with the dolphin.

Already in the fall of 1987, Lada unexpectedly made telepathic contact herself and announced that she got in touch to say goodbye. A little mercury got into the water and she accidentally swallowed one drop.

This metal is deadly not only for humans, but also for all living things. Even a small concentration of mercury in the body of both humans and dolphins inevitably leads to death. And that was precisely the reason that Lada got in touch with us.

I did not have the coordinates of the Batumi Dolphinarium, but Natalia had them, and she contacted the "trainer" and he fully confirmed the information received telepathically from Lada.

I decided to try to help her, and the only option for help was the complete breakdown of the mercury that got into her body.

I tried it and … I succeeded. And this fact was later confirmed by the workers of the dolphinarium …

In the course of telepathic contacts, it turned out that dolphins have been maintaining telepathic communication with other cosmic civilizations for a very long time. The only civilization with which they have not yet managed to establish contact is our humanoid civilization of Midgard-Earth!

Isn't it ironic that these intelligent beings were unable to establish connections with other intelligent beings from the same planet only because the latter (ie people) are so ambitious and categorical in their concepts of how nature "should" develop, that they turned themselves into stupid blind men, claiming that they know better than anyone (even nature itself) the Great Design of Nature.

In the past, there have already been attempts by dolphins to establish a telepathic connection with humans.

As a result of this, the cult of Delphi even arose on the island of Crete and in other places of the Mediterranean, but only people especially gifted with telepathic abilities, mostly women, could carry out this telepathic connection between the two intelligent races of Midgard-Earth, following completely different evolutionary paths.

That is why, the symbol of this cult was a girl dancing in the water with a dolphin …

* * *

But back to fall 1987. The story with a dolphin named Lada has an interesting continuation. When I met Olga Sergeevna T. in the fall of 1987 and she found out about the contact with Lada, she asked me, if possible, to connect by telepathic contact with Lada and her.

Lada was not against, but on the contrary, very happy with the new telepathic contact. Olga Sergeevna kept a record of her telepathic contacts with Lada. And at the end of December 1987, she gave me her notes to read.

She kept her notes very conscientiously, changing nothing or embellishing anything. But the most curious thing is what questions Olga Sergeevna asked Lada.

Most of her questions concerned her family, what and how her sons would have, herself and her husband.

Lada answered all her questions, but I was also surprised by Lada's reaction to such questions. Lada answered Olga Sergeevna that she was still a child.

That, instead of using telepathic contact for mutual knowledge of the surrounding world, sharing what is known to people and dolphins, she spends all the time of contacts to clarify personal issues.

Dolphin Lada turned out to be spiritually more mature than the woman with whom she spoke. And this does not mean that Olga Sergeevna is a bad or limited person. Simply, as Lada herself noted, she is just another “little girl” in spiritual development.

Spiritual and moral development is not associated with a person's age or education, but is a reflection of his level of development, which is determined by his actions and understanding.

And, naturally, different people can be at different levels of this development, regardless of age and education. And, as in this case, the spiritual level of the dolphin Lada turned out to be higher than the spiritual level of a person.

Not always, our opinion of ourselves reflects the real state of affairs. And if a person continues to remain in such blindness, then, first of all, he himself will suffer from this, just like the rest of the living world.

In the meantime, a person is blind in his ignorance, dolphins - the second intelligent race on Midgard-earth, are destroyed for the sake of meat or simply for the sake of sports interest.

Isn't it, there is something to think about …"

NV Levashov, “Mirror of my soul. Volume 1 : text, audio

Girl and Dolphin

Creative Association "Ekran" 1979

A kind and touching cartoon with a sad but still good ending. The dolphin saved the girl when she was drowning - she, in turn, helped him when he fell into captivity. The freed dolphin sailed away so as not to return - the friendship ended, but the memory of it remained.

In the cartoon, no one speaks words - neither onscreen nor offscreen. Everything that the creators of the cartoon wanted to express, they expressed with the help of drawing and music.