By Anthony O. Miller
Brigitte Bardot, the French movie sex-kitten turned animal protectress, has written to President Glafcos Clerides urging him not to allow the Ayia Napa Marine Park (ANMP) to import four more dolphins under a licence granted by the Council of Ministers.
In a copy of her letter provided to the Cyprus Mail, the former actress told Clerides she could not “believe that you could support such a revolting action” as allowing more dolphins into Cyprus “to keep the Ayia Napa Marine Park going”.
(The Council’s April 21 meeting’s minutes show it declared it was “necessary” to give ANMP owner Kikis Constantinou permission to bring in four more dolphins “for reasons of paying off invested capital” in the dolphinarium.)
“You must know that captivity greatly reduces the life expectancy of these animals,” Bardot wrote. “The proof is that four dolphins have already died in this so-called dolphinarium.”
(All four Black Sea Bottlenose dolphins that ANMP imported in 1994 were dead by 1998. Marine-biologists who visited the place reported seeing the dolphins neglected, even beaten.)
“Our duty is, therefore, to protect these animals in their natural environment, and to denounce the dangers connected with (their) captivity,” wrote the former film star.
Bardot noted that aquarium owners all over the world today “boast of seeing births in their pools” of dolphins, eliminating forever the need and the justification for “continuing to capture these animals”.
The 1998 study The Dolphin Traders asserts that the Russian Academy of Science (RAS), the business that procured ANMP’s four now-dead dolphins — along with two sea lions — originally claimed they were captive-bred, but later “admitted … the dolphins were, in fact, caught from the Black Sea”.
“To forever imprison an innocent, sensitive animal just to entertain a few visitors is intolerable,” Bardot said, “and we must denounce it in large numbers.”
“My dearest wish,” added Bardot, who has devoted her retirement to protecting animal rights, “is to see these lucrative prisons — real death-traps for wild animals — disappear.”
According to Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous, “the dolphinarium has shut down … the dolphinarium is closed,” and Constantinou “has not taken advantage of the decision” taken by the Cabinet in April 1999 (to let him import more dolphins).
While the Marine Park may indeed be shuttered now, it is not necessarily out of business. Constantinou told The Sunday Mail in July that the park was merely closed “for renovation”, and that he did not know when it would reopen.
In granting the a permit to import more dolphins, the Cabinet violated the letter of two treaties and the spirit of a third that deal with protecting endangered species — such as dolphins.
In addition to the four dolphins that died, one of the Ayia Napa Marine Park’s two sea lions also died early last month. The surviving sea lion, which was recently discovered to be grossly undernourished, is now being fed daily under the supervision of government veterinarians.
