http://news.insing.com/tabloid/pr-disaster-for-resort/news.insing.com/tabloid/reaction-to-dolphins-death/id-ce653f00
RELATED: RWS dolphin dies upon arrival in Singapore
This was made worse when Resorts World Sentosa deleted public’s comments on its Facebook page.
The dolphin is the third to die out of 27 wild-caught Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins bought by Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) for its Marine Life Park oceanarium, which also opened Thursday 22 November.
The other two died of a bacterial infection while they were held in Pulau Langkawi. Wen Wen died while it was being transferred from the Philippines to Singapore.
Louis Ng, executive director of the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (ACRES) was disappointed that the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) has issued permits for the dolphins to enter Singapore even though he has appealed to them for a discussion before doing so.
He hopes that AVA “will also respect the Philippines justice system and not allow the importation of the remaining 14 dolphins until the legal case has been concluded”. He is also hoping to get answers from AVA on “whether the dolphin trade was sustainable and not detrimental to the survival of the species in the Solomon Islands”, where they were acquired in 2008 or 2009.
Ng said: “I was angry when I heard the news. The rest of the dolphins will know that one among them is dead and will be distressed. I cannot imagine what they must have gone through for the last four years.”
Animal lovers against the commercial exploitation of captive dolphins turned to the RWS' Facebook page and the Marine Life Park blog to express their anger towards the incident, saying it is cruel to confine ocean mammals in a holding space. They are calling for the resort to free the dolphins, with a few asking the public to boycott the oceanarium.
“Alvin Pang” commented: “3 out of 27 dolphins (>10%) dead. What conservation?”
Meanwhile “Jane Reniers” said it was “very sad” that the dolphin “survived a shark attack and died for human greed.”
The Marine Life Park is not the first to spark controversy with its dolphins.
Underwater World Singapore, the other marine park in Sentosa that opened in 1991, also made news when two Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphins, also known as pink dolphins, died while in captivity.
The Dolphin Lagoon originally had six Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphins from Thailand. The dolphins did stunts to entertain visitors and people were allowed to touch them – activities that animal welfare activists oppose.
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