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Biting the Hand that Feeds: The Case Against Dolphin Petting Pools 

People eagerly line up along the pool's retaining wall, their hands outstretched and hopeful for even the briefest of encounters with the dolphins who look to these tourists, in part, for their daily meal. Kids squeal with delight, parents dangle their children low to the water for a closer look, and even the dolphins, with the natural upward curve of their mouths, appear happy.

What could possibly be wrong with this scene, which is played out daily during the height of tourist season at dolphin petting pools around the world? In a word: plenty.

Biting the Hand that Feeds: The Case against Dolphin Petting Pools, a new report from The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), reveals that what looks benign is, in fact, unsafe for both the multitudes of people who participate in petting pools as well as the dolphins who are held in them.

The investigation produced some troubling results. Evidence was found that the physical interactions between humans and dolphins, particularly those involving the offering of food to the animals, can pose unacceptable risks to both participants in this artificial engagement. Dolphins may grow obese and aggressive. Humans can suffer bites and head butts. Even wild dolphins may be experiencing the fallout from petting pools, which foster an unnatural intimacy between human and dolphin.

These risks are very real, and people and dolphins face these risks every time they interact at a petting pools. In these programs, customers pay small fees to feed dolphins (typically bottlenose dolphins) and are encouraged to touch these marine mammals as long as they like.

An Unhealthy Diet

The fish fed to dolphins by petting-pool visitors is intended to supplement the animals' "official" diet. However, one staff member revealed that publicly offered food may constitute as much as 40% of a dolphin's daily diet at these facilities. We believe that inadequate staffing at petting pools prevents the accurate assessment of food intake by individual animals.

Some petting pool dolphins, who are able to out-compete their pool mates for the attention of visitors, have become so overweight that their bodies appear grossly deformed, and their blowholes are nearly covered by fat deposits. This problem is compounded by the fact that visitors were seen routinely feeding dolphins fish from other exhibits around the park as well as human food, including sandwiches and chips.

It is common knowledge that poor hygiene and the mishandling of food can lead to illness and death in captive wildlife. So it's troubling that the HSUS/WDCS study recorded dolphins consuming fish that visitors had placed in the sun on the pool ledge, dropped to the ground, stepped on or torn into pieces to increase their opportunities for interaction (while increasing the risk of contamination).

Petting-pool operators must keep records of dolphins, including their injuries and illnesses. But because they aren't required to report how an injury or illness was caused, we can only speculate upon the degree of injury or illness that results from these poorly monitored interactions in the petting pool.

If a poor diet weren't bad enough, visitors have been known to drop a number of foreign objects into the pool, including some that pose serious hazards to the dolphins. The investigation recorded a wide variety of items entering the mouths of petting-pool dolphins, including sunglasses, paper fish containers, coins, a stone, a baby's pacifier, and a hair barrette. Each of these has the potential to cause gastrointestinal blockage, poisoning or even death.