Terrible Journey for Mexican Dolphins

Aug. 1 -- Disturbing video showing cruel treatment of dolphins in a Mexican resort town has angered activists and stirred up debate about programs that use dolphins to attract tourists.

News cameraman Juan Ramirez says he wept while shooting the video of men clumsily carrying a dolphin named Quinta across a highway in La Paz, Mexico. Quinta appeared to be suffering and several times, she was accidentally dropped to the ground.

"It was like they were moving a piano," says Ramirez. "They weren't caring about the dolphins."

Botched Transport

Quinta was one of eight dolphins that hours earlier were forcibly pulled from the Pacific Ocean 200 miles away and trucked in dry wooden crates to La Paz on the southern tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula. They were captured to be trained to swim with vacationers at the Fins Dolphin Learning Center, where they would be confined to fenced-off sections of the ocean.

One of the dolphins transferred to La Paz, named Luna, died two months later.

Activist and former dolphin trainer Rick O'Barry —, who helped train the dophin in the 1960s television show Flipper — worries that the lives of the seven remaining dolphins are now in danger, because they have no shade from the sun in the shallow water to which they are confined.

"They're from the Pacific Ocean, which is at least 15 degrees colder," says O'Barry. "It's very questionable whether they can survive that."

The trainers at the La Paz facility, however, argue the water is only shallow at low tide and insist the dolphins are not in danger. Regarding Luna, the trainers say that the dolphin was already sick and although they tried to save her, her death was unavoidable.

"We tried our best, she died," says trainer Andrea Aedo. "Dolphins die, dolphins get sick."

Shocked by the video, Mexico's environmental minister, Victor Lichtinger, suspended the facility's operating permit.

"All of Mexico was outraged by the way the dolphins were transported," he says. "I saw the video and I was very, very mad."