The denounce made a few days ago by GAP Spain about Loro Park, at Canary Islands – which submits orca whales, dolphins and marine lions to abuse treatment, forcing them to do acrobatics in exchange for food/fish, and keeps them in small water tanks, when in the wild these animals swim a lot of kilometers and go to the depth of 500 meters down – resulted in a debate in Spanish society about this case and other aquatic parks, also denounced by GAP in Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga and Tarragona.

Executive director of GAP Spain, Pedro Pozas Terrados, answered the critics that affirmed that GAP was losing its focus: “ the objectives of GAP are being enlarged and do not limit to great primates, its main objective. With the project Free Cetaceans, we intend to extend the requests to the cetaceans, considered to be the great simians of the oceans.”

GAP Spain affirms that several representatives of sciences ratify this idea, such as North-Americans Lori Marinho, from Emory University, Atlanta; professor Diana Reiss, specialist in psychology from New York University; and Thomas White, ethics professor from Loyola University, Los Angeles. These scientists ask that the dolphins to be treated as “non-human people” due to their great intelligence, similar to a three-year old child.

We remember that North-American Congress is also discussing the utility of the aquatic parks, which represent a great business for a few companies and maintain, like slaves, dozens of cetaceans. The animals end up mentally disturbed, which causes attacks to humans, as the recent one in Florida, against an experienced trained killed by an orca whale.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International

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