World's Smallest Dolphin Tank Must Be Closed, Says Ric O'Barry

“It’s like a goldfish tank.”

That’s how Ric O’Barry describes the smallest dolphin tank in the world.

Located in the Taiji Whale Musuem in Taiji, Japan, the tank is within walking distance of the town’s infamous killing Cove where thousands of dolphins are senselessly slaughtered each year.

During O’Barry’s most recent trip to Taiji, the Cove star visited the tank—which is about as big as a medium-sized conference room—and spent more than 20 minutes riffing on the trapped, doomed lives of the tank’s current inhabitants, two dolphins he nicknamed “Sad” and “Lonely.”

As seen in the video, the two Pan-pacific spotted dolphins are listless and “hanging at the surface of the tank as if they were dead.”

Related Gallery

GALLERY: Dolphins as They Should Be: Free, in the Open Ocean

Confining a dolphin to an aquarium tank is cruel and unusual punishment.

See Full Gallery

O’Barry says that the dolphins suffer from an ailment he’s called Captive Dolphin Depression Syndrome, or CDDS.

“They will lay like that in the tank, with their head against the walls because they have nothing to do,” says O’Barry.

Even in the largest aquarium facilities, captive dolphins have access to less than 1/10,000 of 1 percent (0.000001) of the swimming area available to them in their natural environment. Compare this to the fact that some wild dolphin pods can swim up to 100 miles a day hunting for food, and you'll begin to grasp why holding one captive in a tank amounts to nothing more than the cruel deprivation of basic cetacean rights.

Make Doing Good a Daily Habit With '30 Ways in 30 Days'

O’Barry’s objective is to get the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) into shutting down “the obscene tank.”

Here are two ways you can help right now.

One: email WAZA’s President and Executive Director to:

1)    Demand that the Taiji Whale Musuem release the dolphins (Sad and Lonely) back into the wild and close down the smallest tank in the world permanently.

2)    Ensure that, at a minimum, the museum moves Sad and Lonely to bigger sea pens and closes down their small tank permanently.

3)    If the Taiji Whale Museum refuses to take action, WAZA should expel them, along with any other aquariums violating WAZA’s stated opposition to the dolphin drive hunts and their code of ethics for captive cetaceans.

Two: sign this petition right now!