Captive dolphins in marine parks and aquariums face profound welfare challenges. The evidence for dolphin cognitive complexity makes confinement in pools an increasingly difficult ethical position.
Captive dolphin welfare suffers from the same fundamental impossibility as captive orca welfare: the behavioral, cognitive, and social needs of animals adapted to open ocean life cannot be met in pools. Dolphins in tanks have dramatically restricted space relative to wild ranging, incompatible social groupings that cause chronic aggression, absence of the varied sensory environment of ocean life, and no outlet for complex hunting behavior. The most cognitively sophisticated animals tend to suffer most in cognitively impoverished environments, making the intelligence that makes dolphins so appealing to audiences the same quality that makes their confinement most ethically problematic. Public education that highlights welfare science rather than performing animals is the most powerful lever for long-term market change.