Seeing them swimming around in circles and performing tricks while making their high-pitched squeal, it’s perhaps hard for some people to imagine that the dolphins found at the traveling circuses that crisscross Indonesia are in distress. But, as activists argue and the above mini-documentary from Channel News Asia demonstrates, these highly intelligent sea creatures are being kept in cruel conditions under the guise of ‘conservation’.
The documentary details the conditions at these circuses, in which dolphins are kept in small chlorinated pools and kept food deprived all day long so that they’ll perform tricks for the small pieces of fish tossed out by their trainers.
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Dolphins are legally classified as protected animals in Indonesia and so it is technically illegal for them to be caught, kept, transported or traded. But as the documentary points out, the dolphin circus industry uses several loopholes to get around that. The cetaceans used in the shows have all supposedly been caught “accidentally” by fishermen, who in fact stand to earn large amounts of money by selling them off. The seven companies that keep the 90 legally-sanctioned performing dolphins in Indonesia are all officially classified as conservation groups, which are legally allowed to keep protected animals for scientific research and safeguarding.
The documentary interviews Bambang Dahono Adju, director of the biodiversity conservation directorate at the Environment and Forestry Ministry, who justifies the dolphin circuses as educational enterprises that raise awareness about the importance of protecting dolphins amongst Indonesians.
Fortunately, there are many people out there who are working to help put an end to dolphin circuses in Indonesia. The Jakarta Animal Aid Network (JAAN) and its founder, Femke den Haas, have been at the forefront of this fight. Those who are interested in helping to end this cruelty can head to the JAAN website for more information.
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