Last month, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, announced that it's considering moving its eight bottlenose dolphins to a marine sanctuary. The move has been decried by other aquariums, as well as by scientists who study whales and dolphins in captivity. This week, the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key, Florida, sent a letter to the National Aquarium stating that removing these animals from their current facilities would be bad for both science and public engagement. Meanwhile, other researchers have expressed concern that dolphins and whales would not do well in a marine sanctuary, and that moving them there would curtail important studies that are elucidating the cognition of these animals and benefiting their comrades in the wild. |
