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business & economy
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photo by Ocean Embassy
Says the industry has learned from past mistakes and makes valuable contributions to science Dolphin park responds to critics by Eric Jackson
Ocean Embassy, a company that plans to open a dolphin park at Playa Coronoa in San Carlos, has come under quite a bit of suspicion and criticism of late.
Mainly it's about their plans to capture wild dolphins to use in their shows. A history of abuses by dolphin parks, a general prohibition on the capture of marine mammals found in the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and other laws, and the belief that the capture of some members of a pod of dolphins leads to the dissolution of that social unit and quite frequently the deaths of its individual members have been cited by various critics who say that dolphin parks are by their very nature a bad idea from the environmental point of view.
The Torrijos administration doesn't listen to environmentalists who are not on its payroll or otherwise beholden to it. For "greenwash" cover they rely on a number of people with respectable academic or activist credentials who are not now involved in independent environmental activism, and they like to invoke the authority of "governmental NGOs" that have no real membership and depend on their relationships to governments for whatever activities they do, and upon prestigious groups or individuals who depend on staying on the government's good side to do what they want to do.
Thus on the recently created Panama Aquatic Resources Authority (ARAP), two spots were putatively reserved for environmentalists, one filled by a representative of the Mar Viva Foundation, an international entity whose main activity is as a consultant for various governments about marine resource issues, the other by Dr. Guzman, a scientist from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, a part of the US governmental Smithsonian Institution that has a number of activities in Panama that could be seriously compromised if the Panamanian government became thought it uncooperative. Those established Panamanian environmentalist organizations with actual memberships that are not beholden to the government were conspicuously excluded.
When the Torrijos administration looked favorably upon what Ocean Embassy plans to do it got ARAP to assume the power to issue dolphin capture permits. However, both the Mar Viva representative and the Smithsonian scientist cast dissenting votes.
This vote, like an accompanying one about permits for limited tuna fishing in a small part of the protected waters off of Coiba Island that also passed over Mar Viva's and Guzman's dissent, did not just apply to the specifics of the issue at hand. It was a new authority staking out its jurisdiction, setting precedents that, if not legally binding, could still guide policies under future governments when none of the same people may be around the ARAP table.
The PRD-aligned La Prensa, whose coverage of the controversy over Ocean Embassy's plans includes gushy comparisons of the planned park to that rabiblanco Mecca in Orlando, Disney World, played the story as a matter of Panamanian environmentalists against gringo park promoters, with the majority of ARAP board members taking a stand for national development notwithstanding the environmental objections. The Panama News sent an email asking Guzman about his votes but so far has received no reply. Panama's environmental activists were by and large excluded from the discussion in the mainstream media. Ocean Embassy wasn't very happy with the way that things had been presented either.
Ted N. Turner, the vice president of international operations for Ocean Embassy, complains that the dolphin park industry is being portrayed in a false light. He allows that some of the abuses that international critics of such facilities cite really did happen, but argues that science has progressed and industry standards have improved since the times back to which the nay sayers point. "Lots of bad things happened, but we know better now."
On indicator of this, Turner noted, was the advance of knowledge that allows the breeding of dolphins in captivity to the point that some 70 percent of the animals in US dolphin parks were born there. A psychologist who specializes in animal behavior, he pointed to the acquisition of information about the development of calves and breeding cycles of both female and male dolphins as essential steps forward that made such captive breeding possible.
Ocean Embassy doesn't plan to just go out and grab a bunch of dolphins for the park, Turner said. There will be extensive studies of dolphin populations in Panamanian waters, both on the Atlantic and Pacific sides. Veterinarians and other scientists will do population studies and health assessments and provide "baseline information" that Panama now lacks. These, he pointed out, would be only the second such population assessment in the Meso-American region and its first ever dolphin health assessment. Only after these studies are done will the company decide where in Panama to go in search of dolphins to catch for its park.
But what about the objection that the dissolution of pods by the capture of some of their members is a disaster for those pod members who are not captured? Turner said that this objection is based on assumptions drawn from incomplete knowledge of dolphin behavior, and that really, nobody knows the effect of captures on pods.
Some of the teamwork that dolphin pods display when catching fish, like the famous "bubble netting" wherein dolphins or whales will go under and around a school of fish blowing bubbles to corral the fish into a more compact mass upon which to feed, critics say, will break down if part of the team is taken out. But Turner argues that there are at least five documented dolphin feeding strategies in the wild and probably others that researchers have yet to discover. He adds that the recombination of wild dolphin social structures in the wake of a broken pod is a matter of conjecture rather than scientific knowledge at this point.
And what about the objections based in international law, which arose with particular force earlier when it was reported that Ocean Embassy had planned to populate its San Carlos park with animals captured in Solomon Islands waters? First, Turner said, the plan is to get the dolphins from local waters, especially given that one of the things that is known is that the Eastern Tropical Pacific region, including Panama's southern territorial waters, has a dense dolphin population of perhaps two million. Second, he pointed to specific exceptions in CITES and other laws and treaties that allow the capture of marine mammals by properly licensed institutions for the purposes of public display, education and research.
Turner opined that, with a worldwide population estimated at 10 to 20 million, "dolphins are not even close to endangered," and noted that the world's 225 zoos and marine mammal parks house fewer than 1,000 bottle nosed dolphins. "They're not overexploited at all."
But what about the worldwide phenomenon of collapsing fisheries? Won't declining schools of fish eventually be reflected at the top of the food change by a decline in dolphins that feed on them?
That's something that ought to be studied, Turner maintained. He hypothesized that dolphins may be changing their diets as the wild fish populations change and said that studies like the ones that Ocean Embassy intends to carry out will help give us a better picture of what's going on.
The company, whose staff is composed of people who used to work at Sea World or other large and well known marine mammal facilities, plans to first do its pre-capture studies but then to leave much of its scientific and educational mission to later stages of its development. The road is in for its San Carlos facility, and "everything is staked out" for the facility itself, which will be built under the direction of the Diaz y Guardia construction engineers. Once the park is open and drawing paying visitors, then there will be a financial basis for expansion of both the facility and the activities that are centered there.
Aside from the bizarre Disney World comparisons coming from people other than Ocean Embassy, why might there be a reason to believe that the business plan makes any sense?
First, Panamanian tourism is up and an increasing percentage of it is coming from people who have no historic ties here and moreover are not coming on cruise ships that allow limited time ashore.
Second, the stalled plans for a Museum of Biodiversity in a building with an eccentric design by renowned architect Frank Gehry will not only create a new landmark by which Panama will be known but also attract more of that breed of tourists interested in tropical oceans and forests.
Third, because of wartime policies and emotions the United States has become stingy about giving out visas, unfriendly to those who get them as they arrive at Miami and other points of entry and quite frequently xenophobic once visitors get past the immigration officials. As a result many Latin Americans who used to visit Florida's theme parks are looking for alternatives, just as many Colombians and Central Americans who used to shop in Miami or New York now come to Panama City for that purpose, for similar reasons.
This confluence of trends suggests there is an existing and growing base of customers who would visit a dolphin park if the company promoting the facility does its job right.
Ocean Embassy has been laying the groundwork for this project for three years now. They've acquired the real estate and construction is underway. The thing is, the success of their venture will depend on some softer assets, some of them intangible. The dolphins and the skilled humans are of course crucial factors. But maybe even more important than these fleshy assets is the intangible matter of reputation.
The company's concern for its reputation will have to be on several levels. As the construction phase gets more intense, it will find that its reputation with the radical SUNTRACS construction workers union will be a matter of business concern. Then, as it hires local people for most of the jobs that will be involved in operating the dolphin park and as the impacts of an influx of visitors to the facility make themselves known to the neighbors, Ocean Embassy's reputation in the immediate vicinty will be important.
But before it can establish its enduring reputation as an employer and a neighbor, Ocean Embassy will have to convince a much larger group of people that the central aspect of its business --- a dolphin park --- is an honorable and worthwhile proposition. That's why the company, having been called into question, is mounting a spirited defense of this critical aspect of its reputation.
"Nobody is looking at quality programs," Ocean Embassy communications director Lisa Lauf Rooper lamented, adding that "our particular problem with the Panamanian press is to find anyone who can assess what we're trying to do." The sympathetic reports are not particularly well informed, it seems, but she's most annoyed by the critical ones that "compare us with the worst in the industry."
"It's a huge step for a country" to do the preliminary and long-term studies that Ocean Embassy plans, Rooper opined. "The objections do a huge disservice to conservation."
This is a debate that will continue, and even if the San Carlos dolphin park turns out to be more successful than anyone imagined, such discourses are bound to have their impact on the way the facility and its growth are managed. After all, the arguments here may be dolphin-specific but they are very much like the objections to zoos that opponents have raised and the responses that defenders have offered. Leaving the distinct issue of abusive menageries aside, the long-running zoo debate that continues with ever more sophisticated discourse on each side has clearly transformed the practices and changed the missions of the world's leading zoological parks. There is no reason to believe that, once the question changes from whether Ocean Embassy should be allowed to capture dolphins to what ought to be done when it's running a public attraction with captive dolphins, all of the philosophical disputes --- let alone the scientific ones --- will stop coming.
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