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5. THE GLOBAL INDUSTRY

5.7   Conny Gasser

Conny's Flipper Show

Like the Gebrüder Knie, the Gasser family has a long and chequered tradition within the circus world. Conny Gasser and his wife, Gerda, are former trapeze artists who went by the name of The Flying Tongas, travelling the globe from circus to circus for a good ten years. But by the early seventies the risk that the high-flying act was posing to their health had become too great and, taking a final bow, they set about plotting their future careers in animal dressage. Yet it was only after seeing a dolphin show in Florida that Conny and Gerda joined the gold-rush, eventually travelling with their tent and Flipper Show around half the world. "Wherever we performed with our dolphins, soon permanent dolphinariums were built," reminisces Conny, more out of vanity than any shred of accuracy.

Until a few years ago the dilapidated Royal Circus, founded by Conny's father Ludwig in 1955, and now operated by his brother Bruno, had its over-wintering base at Lipperswil in the eastern canton of Thurgau. Very much a family affair, Conny, Gerda, and their son Robbie and daughter Nadja, are all personally involved in animal training programmes with sea lions and dolphins. "We were born in the circus," Conny Gasser relates proudly. "My father, my grandfather and even my great grandfathers had a circus. And today we're really international, with sea lion acts that have become famous all over the world, even in Australia. My son has had his sea lion show in New York, Las Vegas, Monaco and Paris. Our other sea lion acts have gone to the Circus Krone in Germany and the Scala night club in Barcelona." Gasser's greatest pride however is his sparkling dolphinarium and pleasure park Connyland, which opened to the public in 1985 and which now dominates the tiny village of Lipperswil. It is surprising how a little glass and chrome can, with such apparent ease, erase a squalid past and confer an air of respectability upon an enterprise still rooted in the merciless exploitation of animals.

In the 1970's, Conny Gasser's Travelling Flipper Show, originally known as the Miami Dolphin Show, was based in a collection of circus caravans in an open field at Lipperswil. Like many of his European cronies, Gasser obtained his first two dolphins, Flipper and Lady, from Jerry Mitchell's notorious Marine Productions International Corporation in Florida. During 1971, with Peter Moses as head trainer, the dolphins were taken on tour to Austria, Britain's giant Belle Vue amusement park in Manchester then owned by the Trust Houses Forte hotel chain, and even to Israel. Appearing in a pool just eight meters in diameter and two meters in depth in a circus tent holding an spellbound audience of 1500 people, their star-turn was to jump through a blazing hoop. The following year Lady died in Germany, but was quickly replaced by Lady (No.2).

In January 1973, Debbie Steele arrived from her native England to take up employment as an assistant trainer at the Flipper Show's over-wintering base at Lipperswil. "We went into this old wooden barn, pushed open the door and there was one tank - almost like a child's swimming pool - with two dolphins inside. Further in, there was another pool cut into the floor with two other dolphins inside. The water was stagnant and dark green. I was shocked. When I asked to see the fish preparation room, Mr Gasser pointed to a box of fish on the muddy floor with an old tap dripping onto it. In the middle of the night someone came banging on my caravan door shouting, 'a dolphin's dead!' And that's how I started with Gasser."

Until quite recently, the barn that Debbie Steele refers to could still be seen at Lipperswil, but no one apart from Gasser presumably knows how many dolphins actually died in those pools which were five times smaller than today's minimum legal standards. That barn has now been replaced by Gasser's new three million franc dolphinarium, restaurant and "discotheque with underwater panorama". Gone are the jumble of caravans, replaced by theme-park attractions such as merry-go-rounds, a miniature railway, a "Moonwalk", a "Las Vagas Magic Show", a few menagerie animals, and soon to come, elephant seals and a "Wild Water" run. To complete the respectable image and emphasise its 'educational value' specially-arranged school visits to the dolphinarium take place on a regular basis. This is Connyland today, reflecting just how kind dolphins have been to Gasser and his bank balance.

The Far East Show

After going on tour to Siegen and Koblenz in Germany in March 1973, Debbie Steele flew out to Tokyo to join Gasser's two other trainers, Ingrid Killer and Peter Moses, who were managing one of the Swiss dolphin deler's most lucrative ventures - a travelling show through the Far East under conditions it would be just too kind to call 'primitive'. With the dolphins Flipper and Lady (No.2), the show travelled through the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Indonesia, while a similar dolphin menagerie toured South Africa. Moses was already an experienced dolphin handler by this time, having started work with Gasser in 1971 after a 3-year stint with 'Captain Jim's' Florida Dolphin Show, first as a show-speaker and fish-cutter at Tiebor's act in Riccione and then, in 1969, as a jack of all trades at his winter quarters in Münich. His first assignment for Gasser was to travel to America to collect the Swiss impresario's first two dolphins - Flipper (originally called Mr Bingo) and Lady - from the legendary Jerry Mitchell in the Florida Keys.

"All of the dolphins that Ingrid, Peter and I knew are now dead," Debbie Steele told me. "The dolphins were transported regularly using trucks, trains and buses, but in the travelling show in the Far East they were literally put on anything that moved, even open trucks. When you put a dolphin on a stretcher, sometimes they panic and try to get out and so you have this special kind of strait-jacket which you tape-up so they can't move. The record transport time for a dolphin to be taken from Switzerland to the Far East was 120 hours, but this wasn't exceptional. Even from Belgium to Manila via Hong Kong with few delays it took us about 28 hours to transport the dolphin Didi. And of course you can't put them in the water immediately. You have to put the water in the pool gradually, and hold them because they're temporarily paralysed, and some remain in shock for days."

"We can honestly say that the conditions in the Far East were the worst you can imagine, the worst we had ever seen," said Debbie Steele. Gasser, shrugging off any responsibility for the travelling show apart from reaping profits and finding replacement dolphins, had simply rented out the whole caboodle - dolphins, trainers and equipment - to Butz Promotions, a company based in Münich. When Lady (No.2) died in Surabaya, Indonesia, apparently of pneumonia, it was later replaced by the dolphin Didi. "But for two months we only had Flipper to do the shows," recalls Ingrid Killer. "And Flipper was terribly upset about Lady No.2's death. After two weeks he went mad with grief and tried to kill himself by banging his head and nose against the walls of the pool." In fact Lady No.2's death may have been virtually inevitable. Gasser had purchased the dolphin from Windsor Safari Park in the U.K., then owned by Don Robinson's Trident Television. According to former dolphin and whale trainer Doug Cartlidge, who was present during the sale of the dolphin: "Gasser was desperate for dolphins when he came over to Windsor - that can be the only explanation for him wanting to buy the dolphin, unless he didn't know about its long history of illness. It had a chronic cough and it had been on medication a long time." Debbie Steele: "During the seventies, the sale of sick dolphins happened regularly, and this is what happened to Lady No.2. The dolphin was sold to Conny Gasser with one months' warranty. Afterwards, it was sent out to the Far East. But the problem was that because of the health certificate, Gasser didn't continue the medication, and by the time we knew how seriously ill Lady was, it was already much too late."

Careless transportation was also threatening the dolphins - a problem that continues to frustrate the dolphin entertainment industry. "When Didi arrived in the Far East her wounds were terrible," Peter Moses told me. "I've never seen anything like it, and because of the climate and conditions, they took a long time to heal." But at least Flipper, with a new companion, began to calm down again.

Mr Sigward Glotzbach was the agent for Butz Promotions in the Far East. Each show was sold to local sponsors, such as banks, garages, cigarette and ice-cream manufacturers. Some speculators would even market their own brands of Flipper ice-cream or Flipper cigarettes. "The problem with this arrangement," says Debbie Steele, "was that to obtain fresh water, ice to cool the water down, salt, fish, chemicals and medicine, we had to battle with three different sets of people and more often than not we wouldn't get these supplies unless we bought them ourselves."

In Jakarta, it was estimated that the sponsors were raking in up to 20,000 dollars a day and in Taiwan even more, with 10,000 people for each show, six shows a day. But according to Ingrid Killer, when Butz realised how much the local sponsors were making, he raised the price and lost all interest in the welfare of the dolphins. "He sold the shows to anyone who could pay his price and with no exaggeration they turned out to be real mafia types, gangsters. Glotzbach left at this point because he couldn't agree with Butz's methods. And so suddenly we had no one left to provide us with supplies. It was a constant battle to get anything from the new sponsors. They even refused to give us fresh water for two weeks because it meant buying tons of salt again. When the water finally arrived it was brown, filthy. Some of the trucks they brought it in had tried to cheat us by filling-up from the sewers."

Back in Switzerland, co-ordinating his many other business ventures, Conny Gasser was reaping huge profits from the Far East Show - according to Ingrid Killer, at least Sfr. 5000 a week. But he was also learning that dolphins, as a "perishable commodity" are a high risk investment, notwithstanding their 'two-a-penny' price in the Keys. In a letter sent to Ingrid Killer and Peter Moses in Taiwan in February 1973, Gasser complains: "I was in England and bought two dolphins. . . During the time I was in hospital, both dolphins died, so again I have only two left. It's enough to make you vomit. I lost a lot of money and I can't get any dolphins from anywhere. The whole of Asia can't repair this damage." But in fact the shows in the Far East proved so successful financially that Gasser and other European dealers soon sent out other teams, including Keith Franklin of Queen's International Dolphins. Indeed, it seems more likely that Gasser was attempting to ward off pay rises for his Far East trainers, and also unexpected bills for clean water, fresh fish, and repair of water purification pumps. In his 1976 book Zoo Vet, David Taylor recounts how he was summoned to Bandung in the hill country of Java where he found two ailing dolphins in a portable plastic swimming pool, one suffering from hepatitis. Though Taylor declines to identify the show, this was Keith Franklin's Far East Flipper circus, and it was here in Bandung that, two days before Taylor's visit, several spectators were crushed to death as the crowds pushed and fought each other to enter the already-packed arena. "The water was brown and contained a high concentration of particles; it looked for all the world like oxtail soup but smelled like rotten fish," wrote Taylor. He concluded: "To dolphins the Far East recently has been like Devil's Island to French convicts; once arrived there they rarely return alive."

Being "desperate" for dolphins seems to have been a perennial problem not only for Gasser, but other dealers as well. According to Moses, after Franklin lost all of his dolphins in the Far East, he and Conny Gasser made arrangements to capture dolphins in Mexico. A few years later, with Leandro Stanzani, the out-of-work lad who later went on to become director of Adriatic Sea World in Riccione, Gasser mounted that ambitious operation to catch Adriatic dolphins at Cesenatico, north of Rimini, "where twelve dolphins died during capture and transportation." Documents reveal that another six Adriatic dolphins were transported to Queen's International Dolphins in Britain. In the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger in June 1974, Gasser is quoted as saying that although the restrictions of the US Marine Mammal Act had forced European dolphinariums to look to the Mediterranean for their supplies, "those animals are much more sensitive and are probably not so well suited for dressage." Following the Italian capture, says Moses, Franklin made a deal with Bruno Lienhardt to capture dolphins in Mexico. Franklin was desperate to replace his dolphins which had perished in the Far East, and Lienhardt, having lost a small fortune at Safariland in Germany because his dolphins were on strike and refusing to perform to the Easter holiday crowds, was also keen on getting in replacements. Upon capture, several dolphins were transported to Safariland, and, via Franklin's Margate dolphinarium at the Queen's Hotel, to Flamingo Park in Yorkshire. "Gasser was sold two of these dolphins," says Moses. And indeed, from the Klinowska report, we can see that it was late 1976 or early the following year that two dolphins, named Baby and Speedy, were imported from Mexico. They were re-exported to Gasser late in 1978. Baby is probably long dead and Speedy (if indeed it is not actually Speedy No.2 or 3) is still alive and on long-term loan to the dolphinarium in Fasano, Italy.

A second travelling show in the Far East mounted by Conny Gasser was abruptly cancelled when one of the dolphins died in Manila. It was then that Ingrid Killer baulked at going any further with Flipper, Didi and Butz Promotions. "After Indonesia they wanted us to go to Saigon," she said, "but I promised myself that I'd bring Flipper back alive to Switzerland."

In 1974, Gasser put on shows at his Lipperswil winter-quarters with Flipper, Didi, Skipper and a new dolphin called "Lady" - this time No.3. No doubt it was deemed important to maintain the happy-dolphin illusion to the Swiss public, Gasser's home crowd, but 1974 turned out to be a bad year for image. When the four dolphins suddenly became ill with blood poisoning and Flipper died, the remaining shows had to be abruptly cancelled. Within days, two more dolphins had died, and the only one that could be saved was Skipper. With the media spotlight upon them, there followed a desperate effort to save face. This rapidly degenerated into farce when an anonymous saboteur was accused of deliberately poisoning the animals. According to a front page headline in the tabloid Blick, "Three 'Flippers' Died Painfully: Owner Suspects Poison Attack!" According to that report the dolphins had suffered in agony with kidney and intestinal bleeding. But "Conny Gasser didn't spare any costs to save his darlings," the paper reassured its gullible readers. "He had vets from London and Germany flown in. Thanks to this at least 'Skipper' survived." As a precautionary measure, the Blick added, "Gasser brought a charge against unknown assailants at the police." But there was a second, perhaps more likely explanation for the poisoning. Says Debbie Steele: "From what Ingrid and I knew of the situation, it was chlorine reacting with the new synthetic rubber solution and paint of the tank which produced some kind of toxin." Shortly afterwards, Flipper No.2 appeared on the scene, but was already ailing by the end of that year. To compensate for his streak of bad luck, Gasser sent out his revamped travelling Flipper Show to tour Switzerland again, this time with four new dolphins called Sonny, Blacky, Poco and Chico. A newspaper report at the time declares: "For three weeks now the 25 vehicles of 'Conny's Flipper Show' are no longer on the road. Because three of his four dolphins became mysteriously ill, Gasser had to stop his tour and return to his winter quarters in Lipperswil. Sonny and Blacky suffer from a skin-fungus and Poco from an infection. Only Chico seems to be still okay. 'Suddenly they didn't want to jump any more,' explains Gasser. 'Of course I could have continued with forced training. But it is better for the animals if they have some peace now.'"

Only relatively recently has Gasser decided to abandon his travelling dolphin shows - partly to preserve the new respectable image at Connyland at the urging of his wife, and partly due to a tightening legal noose. "It's now too difficult to transport them," Conny Gasser told me. "We have good boxes and everything but there are so many problems to go through customs." According to Willem Wijnstekers at the EEC, even as recently as 1984, Conny Gasser, apparently having a couple of "spare" dolphins, was refused permission for a travelling show through Holland. Though this reflected a new seriousness on the part of the authorities in EEC member states to clamp-down on the most blatant forms of commercial exploitation of dolphins, a repeat of the Far East show always remains a distinct and ominous possibility.

Even today, Gasser cannot admit to any flaw in the tarnished illusion. When I spoke to him at Connyland, shortly before its gala opening in 1985, he declared: "We're circus people. We know about animals. We've been working with lions, tigers, elephants, horses, seals and dolphins for years. We keep the animals like children. My wife won't even allow a mouse to be killed up there around the circus caravans - she'd rather train them!" Gasser went on to inform me that Flipper had been in his possession "for 12 or 14 years," and that "he never had a day's illness in his life." Can Mr Gasser be referring to the Flipper which was imported in 1971 and which died four years later in 1974? Or was he referring to Flipper No.2, who by September 1973 was already ailing? "I still have the same dolphins," Gasser asserted. "Of course I lost one or two but I also lost my father and my grandfather, and so this is quite normal."

Citing the case of Flipper, he claimed that his dolphins, "insured at Lloyds at very high premiums" can live to a ripe old age in captivity. "They can last for a good 20 - 25 years," Gasser told me. "They have a much easier life than in the wild where they have to fight for survival- with sharks attacking them and ship's propellers injuring them - I'd like to live like that - just opening their mouths to catch their food. My dolphins have doctors here and first class food from Holland. They're happy here - you can see it in their eyes and the way they play. When I get a wild dolphin the eyes are blank, dull, far away, but when you start to work with them, you can see how their eyes open up, how they watch you, become bright and clever."

In his pre-Connyland days, Gasser even had an orca whale languishing in one of his minuscule concrete pools at "Flipperswil". Purchased originally from Helgi Jonasson's Fauna in Iceland, the effects of rabid speculation upon an intelligent living being seem to have gone entirely unnoticed. "You're lucky if you can get a killer whale for $100,000," Gasser said. "For three years I had one here at Lipperswil but we had no permit then to build this place so I had to sell him to South America. But now I'm interested to get one back here again."

But what of Prof. Giorgio Pilleri's allegations against the dolphin industry? "He is the worst of all!" Gasser exclaimed heatedly. "He had a tiny pool in the cellar, no filtration, no daylight - the poor animals, Ganges dolphins - didn't get any light and every month one died. They were swimming around in their own shit, and he even implanted cables in their brains. And now he starts to complain about us, but it was him who lost the dolphins!" But what of the specific allegation that dolphins in captivity suffer psychological problems? "Of course the dolphins got crazy in a pool like that! They couldn't even turn in the tank. But look at these animals here - they're not crazy!" A liberal sweep of the arm to draw my attention to the generous expanse of Connyland's new circular pool, stopped just before the holding tank. Here, sometimes two and sometimes four of Bruno Lienhardt's dolphins were being "stored" temporarily, their skin gashed under the flippers, the animals hardly able to turn. They were being confined there purely for economic reasons: Gasser was afraid that Lienhardt would come to him demanding part of the spoils in show receipts if they were allowed in the main pool. Predictably, the Federal authorities under Dollinger and Althaus did nothing, and so in the end, the dolphins languished in that glorified bath tub for three years. Nor did Gasser care to mention that just two weeks earlier, one female dolphin had perished after being savagely attacked by other dolphins in the pool - an unknown phenomenon in the wild, but becoming increasingly common in the tense artificial environment of the dolphinarium where a sophisticated dolphin society is reduced to a primitive pecking order.

When I first visited Connyland in late 1984, the four million franc dolphinarium, self-service restaurant and bar/discotheque with underwater panorama was nearing completion. The idea of a discotheque with a dolphin pool seen through plate glass was already generating controversy. According to Prof. Giorgio Pilleri, it was a "perversion of the highest degree," particularly since the windows and concrete walls of the pool would conduct the music and vibrations directly into the water, perhaps causing acute distress to the dolphins which are particularly sensitive to sound. Moreover, the badly insulated water-pumps were contributing to this underwater noise pollution. Although Federal veterinary officer Peter Dollinger, attempting to assuage critics, reported that "it may not be permitted to have loud music and flashing lights", it wasn't long before Gasser's discotheque was hosting live rock and pop bands until 3 a.m. Gasser, however, protests that his dolphins "love to jump and dance to the music! Of course not the whole night through, but they have plenty of time to relax."

Conny Gasser designed the new dolphinarium with the co-operation of David Taylor - or so he claims. "We have a fantastic system," Gasser enthused with evident pride in his achievement. "In three hours we can change the water in the entire pool - one and a half million litres of water, and there's automatic chlorination, automatic PH and higher salinity than in the sea - but this is good for the dolphins' skin." Although Gasser believes that all this makes Connyland "one of the most modern dolphinariums in Europe," the physical well-being of the dolphins there did not seem to confirm that view. Apart from Lienhardt's ailing dolphins Nemo, Girl, Missy and Leo with the infected wounds and gashes under their flippers - injuries received during careless transportation - there was also Gasser's own dolphins Sandy and Lola, one of which was refusing to eat, its eyes swollen and half-closed.

Though Conny Gasser repeated his claim to have lost only two dolphins since 1971, even newspaper reports mention three dolphins dying at Lipperswil in 1973 alone. Also, his statement in 1985 that "I have a dolphin here who's been with me for 14 years," seems highly implausible since his first dolphins, imported in 1971, are both dead. Flipper's longevity for instance actually spans at least three separate individuals - a juggling of identities intended to deceive the public. Indeed, since 1971, Gasser has owned at least 36 dolphins, of which 24 have died or cannot be accounted for. It is known that two dolphins were sold to an amusement park in Holland and another two to a dolphinarium in the Far East, that four dolphins are currently held on long-term loan at Fasano, Italy, and another four at Connyland, but this still leaves unaccounted for, Lady No. 1, 2 and 3, Flipper No.1 and 2, Didi, an unnamed dolphin which died in Manila, Skipper which apparently managed to survive the 1973 winter in Lipperswil when three others died, Bonnie and Clyde imported from Britain in 1980, and Sonny, Blacky, Poco and Chico who were reported to be ill in the summer of 1974. There is also the uncertain fate of Gasser's orca whale which was sold to an amusement park in Argentina. Furthermore, according to the Klinowska Report, Gasser also obtained the following dolphins from the U.K.: Pebbles and Sonny Boy obtained from Franklin and Holloway in 1972 - both of which are reported to have died in Switzerland in 1977 - Cleo purchased from Morcambe in 1977 (perhaps the unnamed dolphin that died in Manila?) and Baby, Speedy (No.1) and Windy purchased from Don Robinson's Flamingo Park in 1978. Strangely enough - though anything is possible in the dolphin industry - Klinowska speculates that the already-ailing animal that Gasser purchased from Windsor in 1972 with a David Taylor health certificate, and which died a year later in Surabaya, Indonesia as Lady (No.2), was actually a male dolphin called Flipper! Last, but not least, Klinowska cites two anonymous dolphins purchased from the U.K. by Gasser early in 1973 which died within two months. These are just some of the dolphins once under Gasser's care that have simply disappeared, thus earning him the title, even in far away England and America, of "Conveyor Belt Gasser" - the dolphins would be alive at one end and dead at the other.

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