Planned dolphin park in St Lucia - please sign the petition!

[felixthecat]

I've cleared this with a mod before anyone says anything. And I've put it in General rather that world p&p so it gets a bigger audience.

So while the rest of the world is moving away from keeping cetaceans in captivity, it appears my adopted country, St Lucia is staying 30 years behind the times. This is fucking criminal - the site they want to use is one a huge historical importance and a resource for the whole population. I cannot believe it's even being countenanced.

Please sign
petition: Say NO to Dolphin Encounter at Pigeon Island

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

A group of investors is on island right now discussing a proposal to keep dolphins in captivity at Pigeon Island.

FFS

Signed

 

[editor]

I've cleared this with a mod before anyone says anything. And I've put it in General rather that world p&p so it gets a bigger audience.

So while the rest of the world is moving away from keeping cetaceans in captivity, it appears my adopted country, St Lucia is staying 30 years behind the times. This is fucking criminal - the site they want to use is one a huge historical importance and a resource for the whole population. I cannot believe it's even being countenanced.

Please sign
petition: Say NO to Dolphin Encounter at Pigeon Island

Things have changed: the general forum is no longer as massively popular as it was (it's only fractionally more popular than world politics, for example, and it can't be read by non members.)

For that reason I've moved the thread and kept a redirect in the general forum so it will appear there as well.

 

[editor]

Here's the background to the story:

A group of investors is on island right now discussing a proposal to keep dolphins in captivity at Pigeon Island. The proposal includes the construction of a restaurant, gift shop, and swimming pool on Pigeon Island, which may result in the desecration of the military cemetery and who knows how much more damage to Pigeon Island National Landmark. This ill-conceived idea is not in keeping with the St. Lucia National Trust mandate to preserve and protect our national heritage and must not be allowed to proceed.

 

[felixthecat]

OK cheers for that editor

 

[felixthecat]

I don't understand why anyone in this day and age wants to keep dolphins in captivity. And in St Lucia? FFS all it takes is a boat ride and you can see them doing their stuff in the wild

 

[Rebelda]

signed.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Swimming with dolphins seem to be a YOLO tick for many these days - someone is always going to be there to assist in realising the dream for £. fucking sad

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Swimming with dolphins seem to be a YOLO tick for many these days - someone is always going to be there to assist in realising the dream for £. fucking sad

When I was 18 I escorted a bunch of kidney patients to Florida. We went to Sea World and there was a pool with dolphins in that you could feed fish to, you bought a pack of 3 for $1. I did so and it was an emotionless experience.
Four months later was on a sailing boat off Majorca and a pod of dolphins started playing in the bow waves. For a good 30 minutes some would be swimming in front of the hulls and the rest swimming about 30' away, then there'd be chatter and they'd swap places. Never saw their faces or got to touch them, but nearly 30 years later I can still remember the emotions that rushed through me as that encounter took place.

 

[a_chap]

Signed

 

[coley]

Signed, and it's off me bucket list if they go ahead, bastards.

 

[Manter]

Signed. Yuk

 

[One dog]

signed

 

[felixthecat]

When I was 18 I escorted a bunch of kidney patients to Florida. We went to Sea World and there was a pool with dolphins in that you could feed fish to, you bought a pack of 3 for $1. I did so and it was an emotionless experience.
Four months later was on a sailing boat off Majorca and a pod of dolphins started playing in the bow waves. For a good 30 minutes some would be swimming in front of the hulls and the rest swimming about 30' away, then there'd be chatter and they'd swap places. Never saw their faces or got to touch them, but nearly 30 years later I can still remember the emotions that rushed through me as that encounter took place.

I've been on boats off the coast of St Lucia and been joined by dolphins many times. Once by a humpback whale and her baby. Several times by turtles. Just get out on a boat and you see stuff, in its natural environment doing what it does normally. Not penned for your pleasure. It's that sort of place. And boat rides make money for local people rather than conglomerates making cash that doesn't stay in the country.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

I've been on boats off the coast of St Lucia and been joined by dolphins many times. Once by a humpback whale and her baby. Several times by turtles. Just get out on a boat and you see stuff, in its natural environment doing what it does normally. Not penned for your pleasure. It's that sort of place. And boat rides make money for local people rather than conglomerates making cash that doesn't stay in the country.

Yeah, the locals can benefit by taking people out to them too, which has to be about a million times better than 'investors' taking a huge cut.

When they came to the boat I was on it was the joy that they chose to come and play with us. It made me want to cry.

 

[felixthecat]

The day we saw the humpback and her baby I DID cry. She looked at us , we saw her eyes. She pulled her baby in close to her and dived. Unforgettable

 

[dessiato]

Done

 

[Voley]

Yep, signed. Get out on a boat and see dolphins enjoying their lives instead. If you miss them, tough shit. You had a nice boat ride.

 

[wiskey]

I remember seeing an orca at Windsor when I was a kid. It was wrong then!

 

[phillm]

Couldn't agree more - signed.

 

[Mation]

Signed

 

[Schmetterling]

Signed

 

[Nylock]

signed

 

[campanula]

horrible - signed.

 

[Billie Zsazsa]

Horrified!
Signed.

 

[twentythreedom]

When I was 18 I escorted a bunch of kidney patients to Florida. We went to Sea World and there was a pool with dolphins in that you could feed fish to, you bought a pack of 3 for $1. I did so and it was an emotionless experience.
Four months later was on a sailing boat off Majorca and a pod of dolphins started playing in the bow waves. For a good 30 minutes some would be swimming in front of the hulls and the rest swimming about 30' away, then there'd be chatter and they'd swap places. Never saw their faces or got to touch them, but nearly 30 years later I can still remember the emotions that rushed through me as that encounter took place.

I've seen dolphins riding in the bow wave of yachts I've been on loads of times - never ceases to be an amazing, exhilarating experience, always an absolute highlight of offshore sailing.

When the off watch crew are asleep below decks there is only one reason to wake them (other than it's time for their watch) and that's dolphins

Always write it in the ship's logbook too.

Fastnet Race 2017:





ETA petition signed

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Sail a cat and you can get twice as many dolphins having fun by your bows

 

[gosub]

Sail a cat and you can get twice as many dolphins having fun by your bows

sailed a Catamaran in St Lucia, no dolphins though

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

sailed a Catamaran in St Lucia, no dolphins though

Shame. Still at least you were on the level, unlike that wrong 'un twentythreedom who's always on the slant.

 

[phillm]

Whilst dolphins are obviously ace - it would seem female dolphins (and porpoises) have a hard time.

7 adorable animals that are also murderous monsters

Dolphins are, as Business Insider's Jennifer Welsh put it in one of the greatest headlines of all time, "dangerous animals that could rape you and kill your baby."

That's a little unfair; the evidence that dolphins have tried to rape humans is not very compelling. But basically every other awful thing you can imagine a dolphin doing, they've done. "Gangs of male dolphins may isolate a female, slap her around with their tails, and forcibly copulate with her for weeks," The Straight Dope's Cecil Adams notes. Dolphin specialist Justin Gregg disputes that this counts as rape, but even he notes some horrific elements of coercion in dolphin sexuality: "Dolphins might use other tactics to persuade a female to mate with them, including committing infanticide (ie, killing calves) so that the females will come into estrus and be more receptive."

Dolphins are also known to brutalize baby porpoises. This is weird. They don't eat the porpoises, the porpoises aren't rivals for key resources, and the porpoises don't antagonize them at all. Dolphins are just assholes. One video captured by vacationers shows the dolphins sending the porpoise's "body spinning round with such force that its back was broken and its soft tissue shattered." A research team described injuries on a dolphin-ravaged porpoise as "perhaps the worst example of inter-specific aggression any of us had ever seen. This young female had literally had the life beaten out of her."

The scariest part is that dolphins are very, very smart. That only makes them more effective recreational killers. The marine biologist Ben Wilson at the University of Aberdeen told the Telegraph's Nigel Blundell that "dolphins use their incredible ultra sound abilities to home in on the vital organs of their victims that will cause most damage."