Can you put your faith in Dolphin Assisted Therapy?

Dolphin Assisted Therapy or DAT is a form of Animal Assisted Therapy involving direct interaction with dolphins such as swimming with captive or wild dolphins. It is promoted as a treatment or respite from illness or disability. In spite of the number of anecdotal accounts which appear to promote its success as a therapy, and the growing number of captive dolphin facilities establishing to offer it, DAT remains a controversial therapy. It involves two highly vulnerable groups of individuals: the people undergoing the therapy who may be affected by psychological or physical disabilities and the dolphins used in DAT, who are either confined in captivity or part of a wild population that may suffer from human disturbance.

WDCS is today launching a campaign to address the proliferation of DAT around the world and has produced a number of materials to explain its concerns. WDCS’s report on DAT, ‘Can you put your faith in DAT?’, explores the risks to humans and dolphins associated with DAT, looks at the scientific evidence for whether DAT works as a therapy and explores some of the other costs involved in the industry, such as its lack of regulation. WDCS has also produced an information leaflet on DAT. Both these materials can be downloaded below.
DAT Leaflet
Can You Put Your Faith In DAT?

In any Animal Assisted Therapy, the health and welfare of both the human and animal participants should be the primary consideration. But our findings demonstrate that DAT is not only ineffective as a therapeutic intervention but could be harmful to human participants and dolphins alike. This is due to the fact that dolphins are wild animals and are unpredictable and that people have been injured swimming with dolphins, sometimes seriously. Disease transmission is also a concern. Dolphin captures are now occurring for DAT purposes and have serious conservation and welfare implications for the animals targeted. Furthermore, confinement in captivity poses a serious threat to the health and welfare of dolphins.

DAT has considerable potential for harm for both the human and dolphin participants. It presents high costs to both the human participants, in terms of possible injury and high expectation and to their families, in terms of monetary expense. It also presents high costs to dolphins, in terms of capture, confinement in captivity and having to interacting with people. Due to the lack of official standards or guidelines, the industry continues to grow with no regulation. There is no scientific evidence to demonstrate its long-term effectiveness as a therapy and viable alternatives exist.

For all these reasons, WDCS is calling for an end to DAT.

WDCS is launching its campaign to coincide with the third meeting of the Parties to ACCOBAMS, the Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans of the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and contiguous Atlantic Area, in Dubrovnik, Croatia For more on this meeting, click here.

Lori Marino, a senior lecturer in neuroscience and behavioural biology at Emory University in the USA, will tonight give a presentation on her review of DAT research, which has recently culminated in a paper published with co-author Scott Lilienfeld in the journal Anthrozoos: “Dolphin-Assisted Therapy: More Flawed Data and More Flawed Conclusions”

The meeting of the ACCOBAMS Parties will include a discussion on dolphin interaction programmes, an issue of concern in the Agreement Area, in particular in relation to the capture of dolphins in Turkey for DAT purposes. WDCS is a partner to ACCOBAMS and is represented at this meeting.

Source: WDCS