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Escape from Alcatraz
Escape from „Alcatraz”
Text and photos Jakub Banasiak
It spectre of another dolphinarium, or another prison for animals, is haunting Europe. The Hungarian investor, the owner of the marine aquarium “Tropicarium” in Budapest, wants to expand his tourist attraction with swimming pools with dolphins. And like many other investors, he uses the argument that animals will not be harmed, because they will only be dolphins born in captivity who do not know life in the sea and which cannot be released. After all, they would not survive on their own, without human care… This is a very convenient argument, used in the dolphin business, also as an excuse for the reproduction of dolphins in captivity. The cases of the return of enslaved dolphins to life in the sea put a lie to this argument.
And what is more, the stories about escaping dolphins are so attractive to the media that they help to publicise widely how things really are.
Particularly intriguing is the story of the escape from "dolphin Alcatraz" of a female bottlenose dolphin named Bahama Mama. This dolphin was kept in a marine pen at Treasure Island. There were a total of 9 dolphins, caught in local waters, to offer tourists the opportunity to swim with these sea mammals. Bahama was separated from freedom by a wire net (a double one in places), overgrown with algae and reaching to the bottom. The dolphin spent there 17 years, repeatedly hearing the sounds and calls of wild animals passing nearby. Sometimes, especially at night, the wild relatives swam very close to the fence. Ken Balcomb and his wife, marine biologist Diane Claridge, who had studied the bottlenose dolphin population in this region in the Bahamas for over five years, often observed such visits.
One evening something unforeseen happened. Without any help from outside, Bahama Mama pushed through a loose part of the net and fled into the open sea. Everyone was convinced that the bottlenose female would not be able to cope on its own in the wild. And how amazed and delighted the marine researchers Ken and Diane were when they met Bahama Mama, safe and sound, with a group of dolphins six months after her escape. There could be no mistake. Any doubts were dispelled by the identification of the dorsal fin and by a short film shot by the scientists. The evidence was so obvious that the dolphinarium owners did not even try to argue against it.
Even more important from the point of view of fighting the arguments of the bosses of the dolphin business seems to be the story of another escape – the dolphin female Anessa, which had never before experienced a life of freedom. Ken Balcomb wrote in his report: "Annessa, a bottlenose dolphin born
in captivity, kept at Dolphin Research Center in Florida Keys, disappeared and was declared missing during a hurricane in 1992. Annessa survived the hurricane and was adopted by a herd of free living dolphins. She was then repeatedly seen – healthy and looking for food on her own."
According to the Ceta Base data, Annessa escaped on August 23, 1992. The "perpetrator" of this event was Hurricane Andrew. The unusual thing is that she survived two more hurricanes, which swept through the area after her escape: Hurricane Katrina (August 25) and Hurricane Rita (September 20).
When this happened, Annessa was 11 years old. Long 11 years spent in captivity. Previously, she was described as timid and withdrawn. A reporter from The Pittsburg Press reported on his visit to the dolphinarium in 1990: "…About 5 other people stood in the waist-deep water, hoping to make friends with Nat or Annessa, a female dolphin who also lived in the centre. It soon became clear to us that Annessa was shy, swimming in the margins of the herd, even when her guardian Armando "Mandy" Rodriguez threw fish snacks into the water and briskly clapped to encourage Annessa and Nata to stay close."
The Dolphin Research Center is a dolphinarium operating under the guise of scientific research in Grassy Key, Florida. Here, in saltwater lagoons of 90,000 square meters, 8 different dolphin encounters are organized daily, none of which is educational or scientific-based. The Dolphin Research
Center presents its dolphins on its website, with only one mention of Annessa: "During a strong hurricane, the safest option for our family of dolphins can be an open ocean. They can look for shelter in deeper waters away from the coastline, where shards and strong waves can be extremely dangerous. However, our dolphins are not familiar with the world outside their lagoons. They can easily lose their orientation and get lost. We found out about it the hard way, when our beloved Annessa went missing during Hurricane Andrew and never came back. Images of our little girl who cannot find her way home haunt me to this day. We need to find a way to ensure the dolphins are safe during the storm, so that we can quickly find them and bring them home when the storm is over."
Contrary to the DRC's information, Ric O'Barry, a well-known dolphin welfare activist, and earlier a dolphin trainer, says the opposite: "Annessa is constantly seen between Key Largo and Tavernier." The United States Marine Mammal Inventory, on the basis of the available data, also recognizes An- nessa (NOA0004389) as a dolphin born in captivity, which has been successfully released. Annessa's example proves that it is not necessary to be born in the wild to know and feel that a dolphin's place is in the ocean and not in a container of glass and concrete or in a marine pen with humans.
References:
CETA-BASE dolphin list Erin Elizabeth, How one captive-born dolphin escaped captivity and joined a wild pod? Ken Balcomb, Cetacean Releases The United States Marine Mammal Inventory
