Captive dolphins in marine parks and swim-with-dolphin programs face serious welfare concerns from inadequate space, social restriction and forced interactions with paying visitors.
Dolphin welfare in captivity is undermined by fundamental incompatibility between dolphin needs and what captive environments can provide. The space constraint alone — less than 0.001% of natural range — is a profound welfare limitation. Add forced interactions with hundreds of strangers per week in swim programs, the inability to form or maintain the flexible social relationships that characterize wild dolphin society, and the acoustic pollution of tanks and visitor noise, and captive dolphins face chronic welfare compromise. The campaign to end dolphin captivity in entertainment contexts, supported by growing scientific evidence, has achieved significant legislative progress globally and continues.