St. Maarten Private Eye

Swim with Dolphins anyone?

DEN HAAG/WILLEMSTAD – The Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals) in the Netherlands has Parliament questions about the incident with one dolphin at the Dolphin Academy in Curacao, where some Dutch tourists got injured, while participating in a show with the dolphin. De Telegraaf even reported that these people barely escaped the death.

According to the newspaper article, the dolphins were exhausted and stressed due to the fact that they had to give extra shows during the holidays. Immediately after the show, management of the dolphinarium took the visitors aside and forced them to hand over films and photos taken during the show. They were furthermore threatened not to publish the incident and were offered money for their silence. “An anonymous visitor managed to keep a short film of the incident from the hands of the Dolphin Academy management”, is mentioned in a press article of the Party for the Animals that has 2 of the 150 seats in Parliament. The movie can be seen on the websites of YouTube, Dumpert.nl, and partijvoordedieren.nl. According to an expert on dolphins that saw the short recording, this animal has most probably caused this accident on purpose, due to being angry and stressed.

It often happens that when dolphins reach the age of being sexually active, they ‘go on strike’ and become unmanageable. This is the reason why swimming with dolphins is prohibited in several other countries. Amigoe reported last week that dolphin Annie that caused the collision is 11 years old.

The Party for the Animals has started an e-mail action to the Island Council and Lt. Governor of Curacao, in which e-mails they are requested to investigate the situation at the Dolphin Academy and possibly close it. The party for the animals has also sent some Parliament questions to the Dutch minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations and the minister of Agriculture, Nature, and Food quality. The Party opposes entertainment with dolphins, because keeping mammals in captivity is in breach of the wellbeing of the animals. Besides, it is very irresponsible to put tourists this way in contact with the animals. It is very risky. The fact that management has threatened the visitors and forced them to hand over their films and photos and so cover up the incidents, is unacceptable. More reason for investigating the practices of the Dolphin Academy and ask questions about the ‘contact therapies’ with dolphins, as is also offered in Dolphinarium Harderwijk. The effect of these so-called therapies has not been proven scientifically.

Also De Telegraaf reported the incident on Sunday, under the title ‘Dolphin jumps on tourists’. The website Dumpert.nl shows ‘the images that you were not allowed to see’ under the title ‘Dolphin assaults Curacao’. Dolphin Academy indicated this morning that they will have an official reaction on the publication in De Telegraaf about three Dutch tourists that escaped the death, when during a dolphin show in Curacao, a very tired and stressed 300-kilo dolphin jumped on them.

One woman had to be treated for ‘paralysis symptoms’. A Dutch couple was lightly injured.

The six tourists had to hold up a stick and the dolphins had to jump over it and one of the dolphins lost direction. “The trainers panicked when also the other dolphins were rattled.”

The other Dutch victims with their followers were taken aside immediately after the incident. “They had to hand over their films and photos, which were deleted right there. Security personnel of the dolphinarium also threatened them to keep the incident quiet and not to bring it into the open.”

Images of the incident can meanwhile be seen on the sire: www.dumpert.nl

article www.amigoe.com/

The link has been posted on several blogs, including my own.
it is horrendous.
I understand this same company trashed their site in Antigua when it was closed.
We always knew they were out for money and had no regard for the animals.
I hope something can be done.
Jess posted in her blog too.

http://sxmliving.blogspot.com/

She personally wrote a few organizations and did get an answer from one of them. She has the response on her blog.
I hope something can be done.

http://barcann.livejournal.com/

As a belonger of Anguilla residing in St. Maarten, I am impressed by the ability of this island to control its workers-both legal and illegal.
St. Maarten has become a free-for-all without regulations and is therefore running its course to destruction because of the lack of Government officials to deal with ongoing situations as soon as they occur.
Mr. Osbourne has done a wonderful job at stepping in to hault all proceedings in this "aquarium project", and for his bravery he has received slandering of his name and his tactics. However, one thing St. Maarten needs to learn from this man is that being in Government is not a popularity contest. If our nation were to learn from its mistakes and work alongside Anguilla and implement some of the laws our neighboring island has, we would be rid of illegal workers and individuals living on the island without proper documentation. Anguilla's residents "KNOW" who are not local and therefore keep a close watch on what's going on, and report these things..which are immediately worked on. St. Maarten's residents report with little if any results from the immigration departments and the cycle continues.
Keep up the good work Mr. Osbourne..great leaders such as yourself keep the Caribbean secure and free of big investers who are only here to destroy our ecosystems and move on when they've had enough.

Yes you are right it is not a popularity contest it is just a job that should be done in all honesty for the love of one’s country and for the best of all its citizens, so one should behave honest and sincere actually just like in any other job.
Again yes, Mr. Osbourne has done a wonderful job to step in to halt in this illegal construction of this “aquarium project”. But if I was informed correctly he was forced to step in to halt the illegal construction done by illegal construction workers if he did not want to lose face. He was forced because of the opposition and the many people complaining and knowing about the situation. This group of skeptical people is growing and they are very opposed by the dolphin prison and its tactics, these skeptical people just do not want to be fooled no longer. Nobody can blame them for that? Do you want to be fooled?
I wonder if you and Mr. Osbourne have read the ANT report that sincerely and honestly keep Anguilla in mind. If you have read it and if you have Anguilla at heart how come you are not skeptical? Being skeptical is not slandering names and being skeptical brings out the best in all parties don’t you want that for Anguilla? I am very proud to live on St. Maarten where a group of skeptical organizations and many individuals halted their government from making the same mistake that was made in Anguilla. Anguilla’s mistake was to allow and permit a dolphinarium to spoil their island to begin with. To prevent such a mistake is much easier than to correct such a mistake. Mistakes can be made in all honesty or they can be made on purpose, but mistakes are made to learn from. So let’s all keep our eyes open and see what we will learn from this mistake. Hopefully the correction will not take to long because negative results from any mistake linger on and only make matters worse specially if the mistake was not sincere but made on purpose. Time will tell, but in any case I will always stay skeptical and hopefully you too.

I agree with you that SXM has to be stricter in regards to how they treat “illegals” etc. However, it is still not the same situation as Anguilla considering the variance in population size. SXM not only has to deal with their people on the Dutch side, but also the number of people on the French side. The open border policy makes it difficult to know who's who. There is really little to compare in terms of size of the population. SXM has dealt with an enormous influx of migrants from all over the world: EU, Caribbean, N. America and S. America migrants, to say the least. The problem is that restrictions are not only hard to keep in place but SXM is lacking in personnel that can professionally handle the deportation of such people without them being mistreated.