The dolphins are said to be prisoners in a strange country. Speaking on the talk show, Sunday Conversations with Patty Roker, Director of Re-Earth and Environmentalist Sam Duncombe, said the traumatised animals were robbed of their freedom when they were forced to leave their natural habitats.
“Let’s get it right,” she said. “[Atlantis] is not a new home, it’s a new prison. Their home was the ocean; they were taken from their home and put in several prisons and now they’re in a new prison on Paradise Island.”
A passionate Mrs Duncombe said removal from the wild is the same as killing the dolphins, because they can no longer perform their functions. She added that living in captivity, the animals can’t reproduce nor socialise. In the end she continues, the whole dolphin issue is a “blaring example” of how some human beings don’t connect with the environment. “To put an animal that is so highly intelligent in prison for the rest of its natural life, so somebody can make a ton of money is morally wrong,” she said. “I think it’s the essence of what is wrong with how we treat the environment. We don’t connect the overall natural environment with our connection.”
She also pointed out that the dolphins are mammals and should be treated as such. They give birth to live young and nurse their young for at least a year. They’re a social group and live in highly socialised structures just like human beings. Mrs Duncombe added that dolphins also live in multi-generational groups just like human beings and are self-aware, which means they know who they are as individuals.
Mrs Duncombe said facilities that sell the idea that a person can be educated through seeing dolphins in fish tanks are misleading. She added that in that sense, people who are incarcerated should also be used as educational tools.
“How are you educated?” she said. “You should start doing tours to Fox Hill [Prison] then. How ridiculous is that? How does being a person in captivity possibly give you any indication of what a person is outside on the street, behaving as he would in a society?”
The ardent environmentalist added that she will continue to fight for the dolphins’ freedom, “no matter what happens and no matter how long it takes.”
She said the 11-acre habitat being built for the dolphins will not be adequate, as man cannot replicate what the animals have in the wild in any pool.
“All these things we hear about the wonderful habitat, it’s not a home,” she said. “Their home is the ocean. That’s where they were born, that’s where they belong and that’s where we need to leave them.”
By: IANTHIA SMITH, Nassau Guardian Staff Reporter
