Jiyu, Photo by Heather Hill, Save Japan Dolphins
To those who think that dolphin captivity is a benign enterprise, meet Jiyu, one of its latest casualties. To those who go to the dolphin show, whether Sea World, the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, or another, the dolphins you see in the show are the ones who made a successful transition from living in the wild to captivity or the progeny of those who made that transition.
What is central to this transition? Force-feeding. Wild dolphins catch and eat live fish. Once they have been deprived of the ability to feed themselves, they must be motivated by food-deprivation (hunger) followed by force-feeding to accept dead fish as food.
What does force-feeding of a dolphin look like? In a nutshell, the first trainers
Hand down the throat
these dolphins will ever see must “break” them to accept a small enclosure. The trainers, or most appropriately called “breakers”, force their hands down the throats of dolphins pushing dead fish to the point in their throats where the dolphins are unable to spit it out. Over and over and over, until the dolphin accepts dead fish from the hands of people as their food.
You won’t see that from the trainers at Sea World or the Georgia Aquarium, because the first trainers somewhere else performed that ugly task. The show trainers may still need to perform force-feeding, but they don’t typically do that in front of you. They save that for the back-tanks. After the show.
But what about the dolphins that do not make the transition from a free life to captivity and become a casualty? Meet Jiyu, who was snatched from the wild, languished, unable to make the transition, unable to accept dead fish as food.
The trainers, realizing that she was a “lost cause” for the show or breeding in captivity, stopped caring for her. And now she has disappeared from this miserable pen, and is likely in a grocery store, in the human food chain.
I am sorry, Jiyu. Someday there will be no more dolphin shows or trainers whose job it is to dominate and force-feed you. Someday there will be trainers whose job it is to teach your kind to learn how to fish and be returned to the ocean where you deserved to live out your life.
And now, reader, please have a moment of silence to honor the life of Jiyu and the others who have fallen due to the captive dolphin industry.
Thank you to Martyn Stewart for the images of the breaker. For more information, see Champions for Cetaceans, My Porpoise Driven Life and Suite 101.
Cove Blue for Jiyu 
So sorry that humanity failed you Jiyu 😦
No, Sandy, humanity didn’t FAIL this dolphin. They KILLED her when she didn’t fit in with their program, and sold her thin body’s flesh as whale, though it was full of mercury. This sentient, SAPIENT, sovereign being was taken from her home, her family, enslaved, and treated so horribly. That isn’t us FAILING. That is us ATTACKING and SLAUGHTERING this amazing being… for no good or valid reason.
— JT, Founder, Protect The Ocean
We will not forget, or give up. We couldn’t save Jiyu, but there will come a day when only wild dolphins are in the world, when all the ones who have been captured have been rehabilitated and united with a pod to live out their lives in the ocean.
A very Sad day to lose a beautiful and unique species and must continue to help Free All into the Wild. xXx
Yes. A sad day, but doesn’t impact our resolve.
This is a eye opener Mo, thank you. I’m appalled. As patron of these Aquarium’s I understand their desire to educate people about this species..but it is very clear that they have lost sight of their true purposes as marine biologists.
The problem is, the aquariums are generally not educating the public about the species (see my two pieces about the lack of educational content). The Georgia Aquarium is probably not unlike other aquariums in having lots of flash and jumping and ball-throwing, but honestly, that is just sad and appalling, not educational at all.
No dolphin need be captive in order to educate about the species. Think of all the children that are fascinated by dinosaurs, a very few of whom grow up to be geologists or paleontologists, but without having to have “live” dinosaurs for that education.
I hope that you will reconsider your patronage of marine mammal-displaying aquariums. These intelligent species are not here for our whim. They should be respected as a species who deserves the right of self-determination and left in the sea to live with its family.
For every dolphin
RIP Jiyu. I cannot understand why some humans would do this to you or any animal. We are all only a creation that must learn to live in harmony. My family and I are totally vegan for all of you. I will meet you on the other side.
I am with you, Kathy.
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I am a newcomer, and I know nothing about the subject matter. Inasmuch as this piece made me more aware of the horrific treatment of dolphins, my question is: Why dolphins? What about other animals in captivity?
Thanks for the question. I will try to be brief here. We can always pick this up later if you’d like. I guess as a preliminary matter, I should confess to being a vegan, or more accurately, on the vegan path. So I feel that the treatment of animals in every single incidence of their life should be viewed through a lens of ethics toward the animals. I am personally unclear about whether we have the capacity, with the burgeoning human population, to treat animals humanely before and during their slaughter; but I am clear that currently we are not. So I do not participate in the eating of them or at least I try very hard. I can’t guarantee that I won’t make a mistake or slip up, but I would venture to say that 360 of 365 days of the year, I imbibe no animals or animal products.
I blog about dolphins, though, because of what we have learned about their intelligence and most recently, that they are self-aware, along with orcas, elephants, great apes and a couple of others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test
So, while I support freedom and as much self-determination as this world can provide animals and, yes, even many plants, and would propose a sufficient reduction in human population to allow natural animal and plant systems retake a significant part of the globe, and to avoid turning the planet into an even well-regulated farm-for-people’s-need, I am blogging now in some concentration about dolphins because I consider it particularly abhorrent to snatch a self-aware animal from freedom to perform, much as a circus clown.
I say that we do not have the right to do that. In the rights inherent in living things on this planet, I do not believe that human can change the rules from the natural to accommodate its own maladjustment of the system.
And I’ll stop there for now.
Again, thanks much for the question.