(Beth Clifton collage)
Clearwater Marine Aquarium seeks dolphins to rebuild population after five deaths
CLEARWATER, Florida––Two years after four of nine resident bottlenose dolphins died at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium within 16 months, the aquarium has applied for a federal permit to import up to five adult bottlenose dolphins from the Attica Zoological Park in Athens, Greece.
The Attica Zoological Park only coincidentally shares a name with the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where 33 prisoners and 10 guards were killed in a 1971 uprising.
The four dolphin deaths at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium followed the 2021 completion of the $80 million Ruth & J.O. Stone Dolphin Complex, tripling the aquarium dolphin habitat.
Five dolphins inhabit the facility now.
Ric O’Barry at the Clearwater Aquarium.
(Dolphin Project photo)
Open for comment until February 3, 2025
“The application, submitted last month to National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, is open to public comments up until February 3, 2025,” Dolphin Project founder Ric O’Barry emailed to ANIMALS 24-7.
“We urge everyone to immediately voice opposition to this transfer,” O’Barry said.
“Clearwater Marine Aquarium is not a dolphin sanctuary, other than in name,” O’Barry emphasized. “It’s a huge concrete building with concrete and glass holding tanks inside the belly of the facility,” dominated by a souvenir store and restaurant.
“Flying the dolphins across the ocean is potentially dangerous for the dolphins, and upon their arrival in Clearwater, they will be placed in yet another concrete tank — a life sentence inside of a building, O’Barry said.
(Attica Zoological Park Zoo photo)
“Much more humane alternative”
“A much more humane alternative,” O’Barry suggested, “would be to take the dolphins directly to the Greek islands of Lipsi or Crete,” a maximum distance of under 200 miles, “where they can live out the rest of their lives in peace and dignity.
“Plans are already underway to build two dolphin retirement facilities there,” O’Barry added, “one in Lipsi, and the other in Crete. Lipsi is farther along and could accommodate the Attica Zoo five dolphins on short notice, if the Greek government would cooperate.”
O’Barry mentioned having already rehabilitated and released formerly captive dolphins successfully “in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Brazil, Haiti and Indonesia.”
The Attica Zoo appears to be divesting of dolphins in response to a multi-year Dolphin Project campaign, explained O’Barry, which included planning for where the dolphins might go.
Helene & Ric O’Barry in Greece at the Attica Zoological Park Zoo.
(Dolphin Project photo)
Protest at the Attica gates
“Dolphin Project, for several years, has campaigned and protested at the gates of the Attica Zoo against their use of captive dolphins,” O’Barry said.
“In 2018 our team visited the facility to evaluate the dolphins’ living conditions. We found several dolphins confined in small tanks with no access to shade,” O’Barry recalled.
“Athens is scorching hot in the summertime,” O’Barry continued. “Even though Greece in 2012 implemented legislation that bans the use of animals in shows, the dolphins continued to perform several times a day.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Attica owners get prison sentence, suspended
“Later that year, the Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy imposed a fine of 44,360 euros on the Attica Zoo for not adhering to the law that bans the use of animals in shows, and on March 13, 2020, the government revoked the dolphinarium’s license to operate.”
Litigation continued, reported Skye Wardle on the Animal Action Greece website, until in October 2023 “the owners of the Attica Zoological Park, based in the suburb of Spata outside Athens, were found guilty of conducting illegal shows involving dolphins,” and “were sentenced to eight months [in prison] with a three-year suspension for the illegal use of animals.”
A year and a half after that, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium appears to be offering the Attica Zoo––but not the dolphins––a way out.
(Beth Clifton collage)
How many sardines fit in a can?
“All the dolphins were born in captivity and range in age from 11 to 24,” reported Josh Rojas on January 7, 2025 for Bay News 9, the ABC affiliate serving Pinellas County, Florida.
“The dolphins in Greece are from the United States, Cuba, Russia, and the Black Sea, according to the NOAA application,” Rojas said.
“The tanks at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium can house up to 20 dolphins,” Rojas was told.
ANIMALS 24-7, having recently viewed the Ruth & J.O. Stone Dolphin Complex in person, views that as being somewhat like saying 20 sardines can be packed into a can that normally holds a dozen.
Dolphin swims in a deep concrete cylinder at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
(Beth Clifton photo)
“We need additional animals” to make it more natural?
Clearwater Marine Aquarium chief zoological officer James “Buddy” Powell told Rojas that “We need additional animals there with our current animals to provide the social makeup that you would typically see in a wild population. So that’s kind of driving this.”
Powell explained that the Clearwater Marine Aquarium would not be “buying” the Attica Zoo dolphins, but would be paying their relocation expenses.
“We’re trying to do the right thing here in terms of providing these animals a forever home,” insisted Powell. “This potentially is a very positive situation. We want to provide the best care that we can. We’re a science-based research conservation base.”
Harbor seals at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. (Beth Clifton photo)
Water treatment plant with a souvenir shop added
Well, once the Clearwater Marine Aquarium was that. Originally it was the water treatment plant for the city of Clearwater.
Deemed obsolete, in 1978 it was donated to the Clearwater Marine Science Center for conversion into an aquarium.
Exhibits including manatees, harbor seals, and loggerhead sea turtles in rehabilitation from injuries by boat propellers did not particularly excite the public.
The Clearwater Marine Science Center, as such, financially struggled.
Sunset Sam.
(Clearwater Marine Aquarium photo)
Sunset Sam
In September 1985, however, a four-year-old Atlantic bottlenose dolphin later named Sunset Sam was found beached in Old Tampa Bay. The dolphin was rescued by a team including then-Clearwater Marine Aquarium executive director Dennis Kellenberger.
Sunset Sam spent the remaining 17 years of his life at the eventually renamed Clearwater Marine Aquarium, painting with acrylics and provided therapy to disabled children.
Florida dolphin freedom advocate Mary Mosely, assisted by O’Barry, waged a long but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to return the Sunset Sam to the wild.
The campaign did persuade the Clearwater Marine Aquarium to double the size of Sunset Sam’s tank.
Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Tourism draw
Over the next 20 years the Clearwater Marine Aquarium became by far the biggest tourism draw in Clearwater, and one of the biggest in the entire Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area.
The Clearwater Marine Aquarium attendance now averages about 750,000 people per year––half again more than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League.
The resident dolphin population fluctuated from three to six, with only two more deaths: Panama, 40, who arrived shortly after the death of Sunset Sam and died in 2013, and Indy, 9, who arrived in 2005 and died in 2011.
A dolphin smile from Winter. See Behind The Dolphin Smile, by Ric O’Barry & Keith Coulbourn, reviewed here: The Ric O’Barry prequels to “The Cove” and “Blackfish” (Clearwater Aquarium photo)
Winter
The recent string of dolphin deaths at Clearwater Marine Aquarium began in November 2021 with Winter, a bottlenose found as a baby in 2005 near Cape Canaveral in a crab trap. Her injuries forced amputation of her tail.
Fitted with a prosthetic tail, Winter survived 16 years at the aquarium, and was featured in two Hollywood films, before her death from intestinal torsion, or twisted intestines.
A common condition in captive dolphins, intestinal torsion is often attributed to stress.
The bottlenose dolphin PJ, 51, rescued from shallow water in Old Tampa Bay in 2018, was deemed non-releasable by the National Marine Fisheries Service due to hearing and vision loss, worn teeth, and arthritis. PJ died in October 2022 from “seizure-like behavior” and “a self-induced skull fracture,” Clearwater Marine Aquarium spokesperson Andrea Alava told media.
Roughtoothed dolphin, believed to be Rex, at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Hemingway & Rex
A 37-year-old bottlenose dolphin named Hemingway, found in shallow waters off Fiesta Key in August 2020, deemed non releasable due to hearing loss, died from intestinal torsion in January 2023.
Rex, a rough-toothed dolphin found stranded off of St. George Island in August 2020, was deemed non-releasable due to significant hearing loss. He died at age 8 in March 2023.
O’Barry, 85, reminded Rojas that while he has been working to free dolphins from captivity and to keep wild dolphins out of captivity since Earth Day 1970, for 10 years before that he was a diver and dolphin trainer at the Miami Seaquarium, including training the dolphins used in the Flipper television show, 1964-1967.
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
“So I’ve seen both sides of it,” O’Barry said.
O’Barry later starred in the 2009 Academy Award-winning film The Cove, an exposé of the dolphin slaughters at Taiji, Japan, conducted chiefly in connection with capturing dolphins for sale to aquariums.
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