EJ MONTINI

Montini: About that grotesque dolphin prison being built here in the desert

EJ Montini
opinion columnist



There’s a lot going on these days, so maybe you weren’t aware that a Mexico-based company is building a prison for dolphins on the Salt River Reservation near Highway 101.

The place is to be called Dolphinaris. Its parent company - Ventura Entertainment – plans to incarcerate dolphins there for human entertainment. Yours. Tourists.

Technically, the company will invite their guests to enjoy a “swim-with-the-dolphins” experience.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but only if it occurs in the ocean.

Dolphins in desert is like wolves in ocean 

A local woman named Laurice Dee created an online petition to protest the facility. She says of the place, “In a captive environment. Dolphins swim in endless circles, [get] fed dead, medicated fish, and suffer from stress-induced physical, psychological, and physiological problems … Dolphins used for such programs are being subjected to abuse through heavy exploitation for human entertainment.”

In other words, it’s a jail.

A big, concrete water-filled gulag in the middle of the desert.

It’s as humane is putting a pack of wolves on a raft in the middle of the ocean so that cruise ship passengers can get a close-up look at them.

A local reporter from 3TV spoke to the general manager of the place, Dr. Grey Stafford, who used to work with Wildlife World Zoo.

He told the reporter,  “By having a place like Dolphinaris, we can expose people to what's going on in the world and hopefully create that energy, that empathy, that concern for our oceans.”

No.

Dolphinaris is about cash, not concern

Having a place like Dolphinaris is about making money.

It’s about cashing in at the expense of warm-blooded mammals we know by way of scientific studies to be highly complex, to have networks of friends and family, to be intelligent, social.

At this place they’ll be locked up so you to take a dip with them for between $44 to $175.

There is scheduled to be a protest Saturday at 11 a.m. organized by the “Empty the Tanks” organization across the street from the facility on Scottsdale property on the west corner of east Via de Ventura and north Pima Road.

We already have too many private prisons in Arizona.

In this one, they’ll hold captive the innocent.

MORE FROM E.J. MONTINI:

Montini: Will Gov. Ducey hand over Arizona’s sovereignty to gun nuts in other states?

Montini: Is Mesa student's indecent photo stunt being overexposed by overreaction?