Posted on: Friday, May 25, 2001
Death of Kewalo research dolphin draws concern
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer
The unannounced death in December of one of the four dolphins at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory has renewed calls for more humane treatment of the captive animals.
Cathy Goeggel, director of research and investigations for Animal Rights Hawai'i, said the laboratory made no timely public statement about the death of the Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin and refused to produce the necropsy results.
The lab issued a statement yesterday saying that its dolphin, Elele, a female, died Dec. 16 of peritonitis, an inflammation of the abdominal lining, a day after displaying symptoms. The animal had been been given a physical examination a week earlier, which showed her to be in good health, the statement said.
Federal veterinarian Thierry Work, a wildlife disease specialist, conducted the necropsy. He said the animal suffered an infection by a bacterium known as clostridium. It initially attacked the intestinal lining and then expanded to inflame the lining of the abdomen, he said.
He was not surprised that the dolphin had not displayed symptoms in the early stages of the infection.
"A lot of these wild animals are very good at hiding their symptoms until they are very ill," Work said.
The Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory, launched in 1969 by Lou Herman, a University of Hawai'i professor of psychology and oceanography, conducts research into dolphin intelligence and behavior and whale behavior.
Herman in 1993 founded The Dolphin Institute, a nonprofit research institution that is hoping to move the Kewalo dolphins to a larger facility on Maui that has yet to be built.
"The entire ... staff tried valiantly to save her, but this was one of those tragic times when we humans must acknowledge that some things are out of our control," Herman said in the written statement. He was not available for an interview yesterday.
The Dolphin Institute has proposed moving the Kewalo program to the Maui Nui Park in Kihei, a $20 million family amusement center. The Maui Planning Commission last year approved zoning for the park, which would include the Dolphin Institute's 15,500-square-foot facility.
In hearings on Maui, Herman said the move was necessary to provide the dolphins with a larger, more suitable environment. While there would be bleachers by the dolphin tanks, Herman said the program would be primarily for research and would not include public performances like those at Sea Life Park and Sea World.
Goeggel said, however, that renderings of the park show images of dolphins leaping through hoops, suggesting to her that entertainment will play a large part in the facility's plans.
She argued that dolphin conditions are substandard at Kewalo and would be little improved at the Maui site.
"They should be put in a place with open-ocean cages, where they have access to the ocean instead of concrete tanks where their echolocation signals keep bouncing back at them," she said. Former dolphin research tanks at Coconut Island on O'ahu would be more appropriate, Goeggel said.
"Eventually, I would like to see them returned to the wild at the Gulf of Mexico, where they were captured," she said.
Elele and the surviving dolphins should retain survival skills that captive-born dolphins might not have, she said.
