ZA dolphin has died for the third time in six months at the Mirage Hotel Dolphinarium in Las Vegas. K2, an 11-year-old bottlenose dolphin, died of a respiratory illness in late September. Previously, in September, the bottlenose dolphin Maverick, 19, also succumbed to a respiratory disease, and in April, thirteen-year-old Bella died after a gastrointestinal illness. All three were born in the Mirage’s Dolphinarium in the so-called Secret Garden, which became famous as the home of the white tigers and lions of the magician duo Siegfried and Roy; the tourist attraction has been temporarily closed.
450 dolphins live in captivity in twenty-five to thirty facilities across the US — tourist attractions and aquariums — according to marine biologist Naomi Rose of the Animal Welfare Institute in Washington DC, and many die prematurely. In the wild, dolphins live an average of twenty to thirty years, but they can live to be sixty or more. “Since the Secret Garden opened in 1990, sixteen of the twenty-three dolphins there have died,” Rose told the newspaper. “That’s a seventy percent rate — although most should still be alive.” Naomi Rose has worked on marine mammal conservation since the 1990s and is a harsh critic of the keeping of dolphins and other whales for human amusement. But while other countries, including Canada and England, have either banned the keeping of dolphins and other marine mammals or tightened their keeping conditions to what Rose says they are “priceless,” lax regulations remain in place in the US. The Marine Mammal Protection Act 1972 regulates the capture and import of these animals and the Animal Welfare Act 1984 regulates the breeding of the animals in captivity. says Rose.