5. THE GLOBAL INDUSTRY
5.5 Italy
Along an 8 kilometre stretch of a once-alluring Adriatic coastline, now desecrated by concrete block hotels, nightclubs, discotheques, bars and restaurants, the sea fouled with oil, pesticides, plastic and sewage, there are three of Italy's six dolphinaria, all vying for the summer season's explosive tourist trade. First of all, there is the Rimini Aquarium, its green-tiled dolphin pool somehow reminiscent of a public toilet in a Motta service station on the Italian autostrada. Indeed, one is expected to pay an entrance fee at both, but while the toilets are normally kept passably clean by the purgatory of those poor souls who must spend half their lives staring blankly at a bowl of 100 lira coins, at the Rimini Aquarium, peering through the little portholes which provide an underwater view into the murky depths of the pool, one can actually see dolphins swimming in their own excrement. Here, despite a seedy and moth-eaten museum of marine artifacts, the dolphin show is conducted with such garish and unbridled vulgarity that the only educational value that could possibly be ascribed to it would be an entirely inadvertent study of human egotism and ignorance. The presenter of the show, a patronising and aggressive individual obviously plagued, like his own dolphins, by a complete repertoire of personal neuroses, nevertheless displayed not even the slightest empathy with the animals, but indeed seemed to regard them with barely-concealed scorn, encouraging them to jump to the highest limits of their endurance and, upon their return to the water, to deliberately send cascades of spray over the shrieking audience. Predictably, the holiday crowds who fill the coffers of the Rimini Aquarium show as much concern for the dolphin as a free-living species as they do about animal welfare. During my visit to the Aquarium in 1988, no one seemed to notice that one of the establishment's four dolphins, with open wounds under the flippers, was ailing and lethargic, refusing to take part in the spectacle. Presumably these must be the same dolphins - Speedy, Chico, Alpha and Beta - that were brought into the country in 1984 and 1987. What happened prior to 1984 is anybody's guess since it was only then that the Italian government began to register the imports of dolphins.
Another eight kilometres along the concrete coastline, one comes across the financially ailing Aquatic World in Cattolica, a victim not only of the rabid competition which exists between the three neighbouring dolphinaria, but also, to use the habitual and euphemistic phraseology of the industry, "bad luck with dolphins". When two of Aquatic World's animals, including an Adriatic bottlenose, died after being attacked by an aggressive male called Clyde, it came up against the determination of the authorities in Rome to put a stop to the establishment's travelling shows during the off-season winter months with the Italian circus Medrano. Traditionally, these tours took them to Florence, Rome, Bologna and Nervi near Genoa. According to the trainer at Viareggio's Ocean World Aquarium, Rocky Colombo, another dolphin, called Bonny, died in 1987 in Nervi when leaves blew into the pool from a nearby railway embankment. "She was poisoned because the embankment had been treated with pesticides," explains Colombo. Left with only one dolphin, and desperate to import replacements, Aquatic World was forced to compromise. Says TRAFFIC's Pier Lorenzo Florio who was instrumental in having conditions imposed upon Cattolica: "These dolphins were carted around the country with an Italian circus during the winter months. Up until 1987, despite all our protests, they were still moving their dolphins, but they have now formally promised not to do so - in exchange for approval in obtaining two more as replacements for those that have died." Though Cattolica had requested permission from the Ministry of Merchant Marine in 1988 to capture and maintain two Adriatic dolphins, its application was denied following protests by WWF and TRAFFIC.
Sandwiched between the two aquariums of Rimini and Cattolica is Adriatic Sea World of Riccione, considered to be Italy's foremost dolphinarium. Operated by the warm and ebullient Leandro Stanzani, it is one of the very few establishments of its kind in the whole of Europe which does not seem to use 'education' and 'research' purely as a legal alibi to obtain dolphins for the familiar drudgery of crude entertainment. While his colleagues in the industry grudgingly fling a few meagre facts and figures at the audience during show-time to qualify for exemption under EEC regulations which prohibit the importation of C1 species such as the bottlenose dolphin for purely commercial purposes, Stanzani actually seems to believe that dolphinaria can play a major role in education and research. With this aim in mind, Adriatic Sea World plays host to 150,000 school children every year, and it has produced video presentations, slides and lessons in association with WWF Italy. In the realm of research, Sea World organised the country's first ever symposium on cetaceans and it is now planning a similar, international gathering. It was also here that Milan's respected Centre for Cetacean Studies was born, an organisation that has now managed to create a network of nationwide contacts to facilitate the prompt and efficient rescue of dolphins and whales that have become stranded or trapped in fishing nets, operations which Stanzani himself has often joined personally.
But what sets Stanzani apart from his colleagues in the industry is something more subtle that is evident in his manner, a natural and heartfelt empathy for his dolphins. The ruthlessness so evident in other establishments is missing here. To begin with, there is none of that blaring rock, pop or circus-style brass band music which is normally used to set a show on its breakneck pace. Instead, the music is more classical in nature, producing a calm, dignified and inspiring atmosphere. Nor does it seem to matter if the dolphins' stunts sometimes go wrong, or take up a longer time than expected. Patience and inter-action, together with Stanzani's infectious compassion for his dolphins, seems to encourage the audience to take delight in the characters of the animals themselves rather than their feats of dressage. That is not to say that some of the stunts that the dolphins perform here are not as demeaning as anywhere else - particularly the dreary routine of the animals having their teeth brushed or being encouraged to wear outsize sunglasses, but Adriatic Sea World must be one of the very few dolphinaria which actually tries to demonstrate to the audience the echo-sounding capabilities of the dolphins. This is achieved by placing soft latex eyecups on one of the animals which is then encouraged to retrieve a sunken rubber ring that Stanzani has thrown across the 25m diameter pool. Critics might well point out that the dolphin is so accustomed to its featureless concrete prison that the successful accomplishment of this stunt is almost inevitable, and yet even if that is partially true some credit must be given to Stanzani and his colleagues for including this time-consuming feat in the dolphins' repertoire.
And yet despite all the care and attention that Adriatic Sea World has taken to improve the welfare of its animals and institute genuine research and educational programmes, one is still confronted by the central tenet of Prof. Giorgio Pilleri's objection to dolphinaria: the inherent contradiction of keeping animals accustomed to vast open spaces in confined, artificial conditions. Throughout its long history, there have been no dolphin births, and the animals seem to face the same hazards and health problems which afflict captive dolphins everywhere. During my own visit in the autumn of 1988, the single male dolphin, Bravo, had become seriously ill after swallowing a plastic ball that had become lodged in its gut. Unable to eat or digest, the animal was visibly weakening, and Stanzani had already summoned British vet David Taylor in a bid to save the dolphin's life. "We are trying different things," Stanzani said. "Our plan now is to use soft towels to keep the dolphin's mouth open and for two basketball players with very long arms to reach down and try to retrieve the ball. But it won't necessarily die. Maybe it just becomes a weak animal that can't be used in the show." Each visit by Taylor or his partner Andrew Greenwood would cost Adriatic Sea World at least $2000, Stanzani added. "Taylor and Greenwood only move because they are paid. It costs a lot because they have to travel by plane, quickly, and the first flight is always the most expensive. Then there's all the taxi fares and the hotel bills." Small wonder then that many dolphin owners can't afford the services of the world's most exclusive marine veterinary consultants.
Despite such carelessness in allowing a dolphin to play with show props without adequate supervision, Seaworld's reputation remains intact. What Stanzani has managed to achieve in putting his compatriots to shame is especially remarkable since it might be said that right in the beginning of his career, he "fell in with a bad crowd". It was the summer of 1973, recalls Stanzani. "I already had a good feeling for dolphins, from seeing them in the wild and in the shows. And here on this coast in summer all the young people tried to find some kind of job to make some money in their spare time. I was a student and I was looking for work. It was at that time that Conny Gasser got me interested in catching Adriatic dolphins." Co-ordinated with the "expert advice" of British vets Taylor and Greenwood, the Gasser plan was to have 25 Adriatic dolphins caught by local fishermen and stored pending sale in a seaside canal near Cesenatico. "A similar operation was mounted a year before by some Spanish people, I think. Everybody was saying to them, 'they're dying just because you don't know what to do,' and so it was thought if we came there with specialised people, this wouldn't happen. That's where Greenwood and Taylor came in." To give the animals "time to settle down", and to ensure that "maximum veterinary care could be given to individual animals" only four dolphins were to be caught per month. Instead of that, relates Stanzani, the fishermen caught all of the dolphins in ten days, and the facilities at Cesenatico were just not ready. His reluctance to specify the numbers of dolphins that subsequently died seems to confirm the worst. "I think the poor knowledge of the Adriatic dolphin and the bad attitude of the fishermen was the cause of this. . . let's say killing," he says with a wince. "Even Taylor and Greenwood who were involved in this capture operation didn't know anything about these dolphins. As well as the canal in Cesenatico, two small portable pools were also used. But the Adriatic dolphins are weaker than the Gulf of Mexico bottlenose dolphins. The American dolphins are used to shallower water, but these are used to 30-40m of water. So staying in an enclosed space, they suffered." That canal in Cesenatico eventually became the site of a municipal dolphinarium, and Stanzani recalls that "hypothetically-speaking, it could actually have been one of the best places, completely natural, with 300x50m of space, but the dolphins there started to die because of sewage contamination, and in the end those that survived were released back into the sea."
Despite his brush with the darker and dominant face of the dolphin industry, Stanzani still seems to hold an inordinate faith in what could best be described as the inalienable rights of science to further human knowledge, whatever the cost in animal suffering. "I don't know if I would try again to have Adriatic dolphins," he declares. "But if it's necessary to have research done on these animals, it will be necessary to have them back in captivity. I know that the first year is the worst. If they can get through the first year, then they are quite normal, although weaker. After this period, I think they are sweet animals. There is a difference in character. I always remember one of the Adriatic dolphins we had here for four years - she died a few years ago. They are not quieter, but they are much more involved in what you're doing. I would say they have more 'heart'." He concedes that there could well be a strong detrimental impact on a dolphin school by removing individuals that a part of a tightly-knit community, though he is candid enough to add that he knows "very little about dolphins in the wild." That is an admission that most dolphin owners prefer to keep to themselves.
Stanzani is also one of the very few dolphinarium operators to have the grace and courage to admit, in spite of fundamental disagreements, that Prof. Giorgio Pilleri's controversial work on captive dolphins is worthy of merit. "He is a nice man, and very knowledgeable," says Stanzani, "but I think he had the wrong experience with his own dolphins, and the ones in Duisburg Zoo in Germany. At that time the death rate was high, but we have learnt a great deal since then. What he says about the dolphin brain becoming smaller in captivity is nonsense, but part of his work is very valuable. I think dolphins do suffer from psychological problems. We can't say that they don't - but they may also have psychological problems in the wild. What we must try to do is to alleviate those problems. Our standards can't only be limited to the size of the pool - it's much more than that, the most important being a good rapport with the animals and how the group is composed. They must have their own social life - and in this way even our own attitude has changed. People were once coming here and saying, 'we would like to swim with the dolphins', and we would say, 'okay, do it'. And afterwards we realised that the pool is their home and so if you want to swim with them you have to ask them, not us. In other words, you must get to know the animals before, and build up some kind of rapport with them."
Nor does Stanzani deny that captive dolphins are susceptible to strain, anxiety and boredom, though the measures that can be taken to alleviate these all too common afflictions must, by implication, be as limited as their artificial environment. "Just like us," he says, "these animals suffer from stress and boredom, especially at the end of the summer. It's not that they're tired physically, but they're tired mentally because they always do the same things, and so we try to keep them interested by teaching them something different. These are the things that help to make their life happy."
Although the Italian dolphinaria, like those in every other EEC nation, must abide by ordinances which only approve imports for the purposes of research, education or captive breeding, that is where the law ends its protection, since domestic animal welfare legislation is virtually non-existent. There are no rules governing pool size, and no procedure whereby a member of the public, witnessing some form of animal abuse, could complain to the authorities and set an investigation in motion. "It is left only to common sense," laments Stanzani, and indeed, in numerous instances common sense in the Italian dolphinarium industry is sadly lacking.
Close to the shores of Lake Garda there is the Disney-style theme park called Gardaland, whose attractions, from Dracula's Castle and the Magic Mountain Roller-Coaster to the Rio Bravo, a Wild West Village replete with Saloon-Pizzeria, acts as a magnate for over 2 million people every year. Almost at the very centre of the park is the "Florida Dolphin Show" operated by veteran Italian performer Franco Carrini and his son Oscar. "It is purely a circus-style show," declares TRAFFIC's Pier Lorenzo Florio contemptuously, and even Leandro Stanzani, who is normally too diplomatic to openly criticise his colleagues in the industry, declares that in this style of show, it is not so much the dolphins themselves which receive top billing but, with all the razzle-dazzle and exhibitionism of the circus, the sensation-hungry Duo Carrini. Young Oscar's star-turn is to be launched out of the water on the nose of one of the Show's two dolphins. Although this particular trick is also seen in many other dolphinaria, it is here where it seems most spectacular, quite simply because it is undoubtedly one of the smallest dolphin pools still in existence in Europe. A hand-me-down relic from the former owner of Adriatic Sea World in Riccione, it was constructed in 1962 with travelling shows in mind, and was sold-off to Gardaland in 1973, complete with circus-style "big top". "Tiny top" would probably be a more accurate description however, since the circular pool which occupies the centre of the tent is no more than 8m in diameter, with an estimated depth of between 3 and 4m. There is no holding pool, and other standard equipment - apart from essential show-props like toothbrush and rubber dingy - is either primitive or non-existent. Perhaps it is especially fitting then that the two dolphins here are named Romeo and Juliet, since their inevitable tragedy will be played-out again and again before the unseeing crowds.
Italy's fifth dolphinarium is situated in the park known as Zoo Safari in Fasano, near Brindisi, its four dolphins, Sandy and Lola, Speedy and Cubie, provided under long-term lease by Switzerland's inimitable Conny Gasser. With all the hyperbole that is endemic to the circus world, on 17 November 1988, Matteo Colucci, owner of the Zoo Safari, announced that 15 year old Lola had given birth to a calf, prompting the local press to proclaim it "a phenomenal event of world-wide interest." This is in spite of the fact that births of captive dolphins are by no means exceptional: only their survival into adulthood is. But Colucci was obviously flogging the media horse for all he was worth. The calf, he declared to the press, had been given the name of Katia "in honour of the soprano Katia Ricciarelli, who had expressed the desire to personally attend the nocturnal birth." Hopes of a similar media blitz in March the previous year were soon quashed when Cubie's newborn calf perished because the mother refused to push her child to the surface to take its first breath. "Normally, in the wild, other dolphins would assist in the birth" explains Florio, "but the people at Zoo Safari had no idea what to do to help the mother."
The squalid Ocean World Aquarium at the Lido Camaiore on the outskirts of Viareggio, has been plagued by controversy for years, not only in terms of animal welfare abuse but also a seemingly magnetic attraction for shady business dealings. In recent years, the dolphin shows have been provided by René Duss, who, as we have already seen, conceded defeat at Viareggio when all of his animals suddenly succumbed to disease. In his wake came Bruno Lienhardt, dolphin-dealer extraordinaire who, as we shall discover later, eventually broke into the Aquarium in the dead of night and stole his own dolphins. Following this fiasco, the dolphinarium was taken over lock, stock and barrel by Umberto Riva, a member of the Riva circus dynasty. Since then, the scandals have not abated, but multiplied. Like many of Italy's dolphin showmen, di Riva - which inexplicably also boasts an office in Las Vagas, obtained its first three dolphins from the quasi state-run Acuario Nacional in Cuba in 1987. Within weeks one female had died, leaving the dolphins Fidel and Malu as the sole occupants of the pool.
By this time, Riva had promoted the young American Rocky Colombo to the position of head dolphin trainer, having recently dismissed Giuseppe Cohen, formerly a hired hand at Riccione. "Cohen was a hopeless trainer," Colombo told me, "and bad news for the animals. I wouldn't like to see him go anywhere near a dolphin." One of the tricks presented at Viareggio, explained Colombo, was for the dolphins to lie on their backs at the edge of the stage and for the trainer, using a large show prop hammer, to gently tap one and then the other on the belly so that the animals would splash their tails in the water as though displaying a kind of knee-jerk reaction. The climax of the stunt is for the first dolphin to splash its tail at the precise moment that its companion is tapped. "I had just gone out for a short while during one of the training sessions," relates Colombo. "When I got back I saw that Cohen had really lost his temper or something and he was really thumping one of the dolphins with the hammer. I went up to him, shouting, 'what the fuck do you think you're doing?' Some time after I managed to persuade Riva to get rid of him, and he was sacked."
With endearing naivety, Colombo seemed to display inordinate faith in the goodwill of the Riva brothers. "Viareggio is not the best in the world, but this is my first big break," he explained. "I would rather be out there with the dolphins," he said, gesturing towards the sea, "working with them in the wild. I know they don't really like it to be in a pool." As he put Fidel and Malu through their paces, practising the repertoire of stunts for the new season, the two dolphins displayed an impressive degree of synchronisation - perhaps because they had only recently been captured, their uncanny communication abilities not yet impaired by their captivity. There can be little doubt that like Stanzani, Colombo too loves his dolphins, but as it is in human relationships, ambition can conflict with, and even ultimately corrupt that love. Asked whether there was any substance to the rumour that the Rivas were intent upon having the dolphins take part in a circus-style travelling show, Colombo replied: "The Rivas have big plans for the future including a completely new place where they'll need another four dolphins. And here the pool has to be completely reconstructed and that is the only reason why they wanted a permit for moving dolphins - not for a travelling show." But either Colombo was lying, or in the exuberance and naivety of his years, he was being deliberately mislead.
With ambitious though tenaciously obscure plans for the future to exploit the summer tourist trade, Riva, much to the consternation of Pier Lorenzo Florio, had already submitted an application to import another pair of dolphins. "I was and I continue to be irrevocably opposed to any importation of dolphins by Riva," Florio declares adamantly. "The three original dolphins were imported under false pretences. Prior to granting the application, the CITES Scientific Authority demanded that Riva produce a scientific or educational justification for the import. It later transpired that Professor Romagnoli, Director of the Institute of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pisa, who is also one of the 4 members of the Scientific Authority, was tricked into giving his signature and approval for a spurious scientific study to be conducted at the dolphinarium to make it eligible for import approval. Professor Romagnoli now says that carelessly, he must have signed this paper without even looking at it." One of Florio's main objections to the original import was his suspicion that Riva, with its circus tradition, would be tempted to take the animals on tour. Indeed, it wasn't the first time that an Italian circus had made big plans for a travelling Flipper Show. Notwithstanding the EEC education or scientific clause, Circo Medrano, known as Circo Italiano when it tours abroad, had the gall to request permission to import two Tursiops truncatus in 1985 on the grounds that animal acts in the circus are inherently educational. The application was denied by the CITES Scientific Authority, though Medrano's garish billboard posters, so typical of Italian circus art, continued to depict a performing dolphin, even in 1988. As we have already seen, this was due to Medrano side-stepping the law by signing a lucrative business agreement with Cattolica's Aquatic World to provide show dolphins during the off-season winter months. Florio's suspicion of Riva's motives proved well-founded when, in December 1988, Fidel and Malu were transported to Livorno to perform in a Christmas show. There, Fidel died. Explains Rocky Colombo: "We were already having an emergency pool built at Livorno so we could move the dolphins temporarily while the Viareggio pool was being renovated. But the government told us not to move the dolphins anywhere. Then we started to have big problems. The pool was leaking badly and with the water loss we were also losing thousands of kilos of salt. This began to have a bad effect on the dolphins because however much salt we put in - and the Rivas were spending a fortune on salt - we couldn't keep the salinity, the osmotic pressure high enough. Both of the dolphins began to suffer with badly peeling skin and kind of ulcers over the eyes. We phoned David Taylor who told us we either had to get the salinity high enough immediately or we had to move the dolphins. So we decided to move them, and we didn't even have time to tell the government."
Despite such pleas of innocence, the fact remains that the dolphins were conveniently moved in time to appear at the pre-arranged Christmas show at Livorno. The elevated metal pool - apparently 10m in diameter and 4m deep - awaiting Fidel and Malu was contained in a circus-style big-top on the outskirts of the city, holding about a 100 people. Even though the dolphins were both ill, two Christmas shows were held there. "Then one morning I went to the pool and found Fidel dead," says Colombo. "The Greens and the environmentalists - they all said it was caused by stress because of taking the animals on the road, and afterwards we had demonstrations outside the gates. But David Taylor has said that it had nothing to do with stress. He supported us moving the dolphins. It was only a half an hour journey - there was no stress - not like Cattolica's travelling show which was on the road for five hours at a time."
Predictably, the Rivas are now exerting pressure on the government to allow replacement imports, arousing public sympathy for the plight of the lone female and condemning it as cruel to leave the animal on her own. "She needs a companion," insists Colombo, although he also concedes that it is hard for any trainer to present "a good show with a single dolphin." But for the moment at least, the authorities seem to be sticking to their guns, realising that they would have no legal means to prevent continued circus-style travelling shows by the Rivas. "I think they're being paid by the other dolphinaria who get as many dolphins as they want," Colombo complains bitterly. "They want to drive us out of business. Look at Riccione. They once had six or eight dolphins there. What happened to them? Why is no one asking that? Or Rimini or Cattolica. They complain about circus people being involved here, but those guys over there used to be lifeguards and beach bums!" Yet Colombo remains determinedly optimistic for the future, and, with advice from colleagues in the industry in America he is compiling a scientific study proposal which he describes as "dynamite" but which he is keeping a closely guarded secret lest it be sabotaged by his competitors. Asked how scientific study could be compatible with a travelling circus, Colombo insists - once again - that the dolphins would not be moved. This is our long-term pool now," he says. "We won't go back to Viareggio any more." Florio on the other hand remains resolutely pessimistic regarding Riva's chances. "Now, after being tricked like this, the Scientific Authority is unlikely to grant Riva permission to import any more dolphins," he says. "Indeed, there has even been talk of revoking their license. In any event, Professor Romagnoli of Pisa University has told me that only over the collective bodies of the Scientific Authority will this application be granted." Barring a case of smuggling, declares Florio, Riva will have to wait for the EEC to de-list the dolphins from Annex C1 to C2. "This case demonstrates precisely what will happen if that de-listing comes about," he warns. "The Scientific Authority will have little or no influence on further imports of dolphins, unable to impose even the most rudimentary conditions. Remember, prior to 1984 when the EEC regulations came into force, we did not even have import records for dolphins. It will completely clip our wings." Ironically, Rocky Colombo agrees. "Then they'll really have to worry," he gloats. "There'll be lots of parks with dolphins opening up here in Italy."
Not long afterwards, Riva once again took to the road, moving its sole surviving dolphin to the Marina di Pisa, 10km outside the city in the direction of Livorno. The circus is seeking permission to build a permanent pool here, and although building materials are in evidence around the site, the commune, which is being besieged with vigorous protests by WWF Italy and other conservation groups, has yet to give its assent. For the time being, the dolphin Malu has been consigned to the swimming pool of the neighbouring bar/pizzeria.
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