Third detainee dies at Dolphinaris, Arizona's dolphin gulag

They committed no crime.

They pose no threat.

They are smart, social creatures, handsome, outgoing, perhaps the second most intelligent species on earth.

(As long as we humans get to compile the list, anyway.)

Inmates petted by paying customers

They are guilty only of being exactly what they are – beautiful and appealing. Which is enough for money-grubbing entrepreneurs to lock up a bunch of them in a water-filled concrete-walled Alcatraz where they spend their lives swimming in circles in concrete ponds to be petted by paying customers.

The place is called Dolphinaris, a friendly sounding name for a prison in the middle of our desert, just beyond Scottsdale's border.

Like humans, not all dolphins can make the adjustment to life in an internment camp.

The others who were lost

Back in September 2017, a bottlenose dolphin named Bodie died at the facility, followed by a 10-year-old bottlenose dolphin named Alia in May 2018.

Now a third dolphin has died. Khloe, an 11-year-old Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, died Dec. 30.

The people who run the stalag speak about how everything was done to save the dolphin and blah, blah, blah. Just as they did with the previous two deaths.

I said when this atrocity of an attraction was under construction that I can’t imagine dolphins locking humans into a cell and charging other dolphins an exorbitant amount of money to mingle with us, using the lame excuse that interacting with the inmates is good for our species.

How do you explain this?

That’s how Dolphinaris, the Mexico-based company behind the attraction, tries to justify its money-grubbing enterprise.

The company’s website said, “The mission of Dolphinaris Arizona is to amaze, inspire, and empower guests, encouraging them to become stewards of the oceans and its inhabitants. We hope to deepen respect for dolphins and our natural world, and encourage visitors to take actions, large and small, that can make a difference.”

Years ago, a guy at the gym at the downtown “Y” introduced himself to me, saying he recognized me from the newspaper and thanking me for keeping him sane.

“You and everybody else at the paper,” he said. “Without being able to read the news now and then over the past couple of years I would have gone crazy. Or killed myself.”

Punishing the NOT guilty

I asked him what was the problem.

“Prison,” he said. “When you’re locked up and you love life and you’re even a little intelligent, being locked in a cell … it can kill you.”

He didn’t rail against the system or claim that he’d been railroaded. The place took its toll on him, he said, but he admitted that he’d done some things for which he deserved to be imprisoned.

What had Khloe done? Or Alia? Or Bodie?

Except maybe be better than us.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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